


What Isn’t and Came To Be

by Hobbitual_Psychick



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Baby Jack Kline, Cannon Divergent, Crowley Lives (Supernatural), Crowley’s Blood addiction, Fan Art, Juliet Crowley’s Hellhound, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-21
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 06:26:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 11
Words: 25,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26468656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hobbitual_Psychick/pseuds/Hobbitual_Psychick
Summary: Carrying on and diverging from my previous story The Thing You Hate. A realisation on Crowley's part leads to a cannon divergent AU-universe swerve into left field.In this version season 12 ends much differently, Crowley never needed to lose to win. So what if his nuke on a leash ploy with Lucifer didn’t work out?! Our favourite King of Hell is smarter than to give up and suicide, he’s a survivor and has plans and schemes to claw his way back to the top of the heap using Kelly Kline’s baby boy and a prophet.
Relationships: Castiel & Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester, Crowley & Sam Winchester, Crowley (Supernatural) & Original Character(s), Crowley (Supernatural)/Dean Winchester, Dean Winchester & Crowley (Supernatural), Dean Winchester & Mary Winchester & Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester, Lucifer/Sam Winchester
Comments: 7
Kudos: 16





	1. Prologue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This prologue is a cliff notes run down of what has gone before in my previous story, ‘The Thing You Hate,’ since admittedly that story is very long and twisty, this run down ought to be enough to jump into this version of the story running.  
> If you have already read TTYH Feel free to skip and Thank you, I salute you, and welcome back!  
> This time I intend to utterly destroy the ending and everything season 13 compliant... because why not hehe

** What Isn’t And Came To Be **

Prologue

**_Previously on Supernatural… I mean ‘The Thing You Hate’_ **

After Crowley and the good guys save God and all creation from the Darkness. Crowley teams up with Castiel and the Winchester’s to hunt down Lucifer. To much buddy comedy with Castiel ensues, followed by a chase through LA after Lucifer, who is wearing a Palaeolithic rock has-been. All parties get their asses handed to them and Lucifer jumps ship.

Shortly after, Crowley discovers Lucifer’s next vessel is none other than the President of the United States.  
Wanting to avoid being ground zero on a worldwide nuclear war or some other politically sparked shenanigan, Crowley, Team free will and various hangers on formulate a plan to expel Lucifer from the President. (Using a device the British Men of Letters lend them by way of a peace offering, to make up for the whole abduction and sexy torture of Moose.)

They manage to track and expel Lucifer from of the president. Team free will intending to send Lucifer back into the cage, but Crowley has other more fun plans. He tampers with Rowena’s spell and sends Lucifer into the newly renovated body of Lucifer’s old substandard vessel, Nick. Crowley’s team having been working hard, and discovered a way to use a combination of gene therapy and magic, to strengthen the flesh and embed warding from the cage into the very molecules of the Nick vessel. By keying all the warding to himself, Crowley now has the perfect way of controlling and visit every indignity he can conceive upon Lucifer, as payback for everything Lucifer has done to him.

Crowley is perfectly happy, back on his throne where he belongs, when he discovers that the nephilim Lucifer put into the belly of one of the Presidents aids, Kelly Kline’s, is still alive.  
What’s worse, one of the three remaining yellow eyed demons, or princes of Hell, Dagon, has absconded with the potentially world ending bundle of not-joy. Crowley is concerned, after Azazel’s death, Ramiel, Dagon and Asmodeus had abdicated their claim (on the understanding they were left alone) to the black throne of Hell. This had allowed Crowley to claw his way to the top of the heap and become King of Hell himself.  
Dagon’s interest in Lucifer’s spawn may signal a change of heart on Dagon’s part and herald a very strong challenge to his rule.

Annoyingly the Winchester’s and the British Men of Letters (who have been sniffing around, showing every sign of wanting to set up shop in America again, after all the drama with God’s sister, The Darkness) have failed miserably to find and kill Dagon, or Lucifer’s bastard child.  
Not wanting junior Lucifer 2.0 to pick up where it’s Daddy left off, in the world destruction stakes, Crowley finds he is forced to start his own search and plans to find and kill the child and Dagon.

Then he gets an SOS that someone has decided to attack and piss off Ramiel when he arrives to deal with the situation, he discovers the bloody Winchester’s, their angel and the Winchester’s Darkness reanimated Mommy (who Crowley has it on good authority has been drinking the BMoL cool-aide.) ‘Bollocks!’ doesn’t even start to express Crowley’s aggravation with the situation.  
He tries to talk both sides down. But Ramiel refuses and knocks Crowley out. Ramiel has had a grudge against angels for a while apparently, after getting captured for a bit, by them, back in the day.

The Winchester’s manage to disarm and stab Ramiel with his own weapon, the Michael Lance, a nasty bit of kit that kills demons fast and angels slow and painful; rotting them from the inside out. Unfortunately, in the fracas Castiel manages to get himself injured by the lance before Ramiel dies. But some quick thinking on Crowleys part leads Crowley to destroy the Michael Lance trying to save Dean’s mopey winged boy toy. The Hail Mary actually works and Castiel lives to act constipated another day.

Ramiel had been in possession of The Colt, a gift Crowley bestowed on him as an attempt to curry favour after Azazel’s demise. A gift that possibly led to Ramiel offering his abdication in Crowley’s favour.  
With Ramiel dead, Crowley decides to retrieve the Colt, however when he goes back to retrieve the gun, Crowley finds it is missing and realises that he has a traitor on in his ranks.

Chirone, a traitorous little opportunist Crowley once used to set the BMoL on Rowena, he soon learns has been playing both sides. She sold the information about The Colts whereabouts to the BMoL and the BMoL sent Mary Winchester off to retrieve it.

Investigating further using his own agents inside the BMoL Crowley also discovers Chirone has organised to sell the BMoL a Hellhound. Obviously, such treachery can not be left unpunished or utilised.  
After a fun packed torture session on his rebellious minion Crowley decides to use the situation to his own advantage and uses Chirone to sell the HellHound in exchange for information about the warding the BMoL use (Chirone claiming she is on the run from Crowley and needs it for protection from him.)

Reverse engineering that warding, Crowley penetrates the BMoL’s defences and snoops on them. 

He discovers the BMoL have had the Winchester’s under surveillance for sometime and have decided that the American hunters (chiefly the Winchester’s) are causing as much harm as good and have decided to wipe the whole lot out. While Crowley couldn’t care less about most American hunters, he has a possessive thing going on over Sam and Dean Winchester.  
They are useful on occasion and while they aren’t exactly his friends they are the closest thing Crowley has.

Crowley also discovers another titillating nugget of information the Winchester’s have another friend, one he’s never heard of, one Michele Chadwick. Ex scientist and happily married mother of four, living half a world away in New Zealand. Apparently the woman had visions of the Winchester’s future, and has been helping the boys.

Crowley proceeds to investigate the woman and discovers something the BMoL haven’t. Michele is being compelled to write a Winchester gospel and post it on fanfiction.

Intrigued,Crowley reads her story and discovers it chronicles her involvement with Moose and Squirrel and their twisty journey to discovering her backstory.

The Winchester’s new pet was born a pre-prophet and a group of angels used infant her for a rather un angelic spot of experiment, injecting angel grace and yellow eyed demon blood into her as a wee child. Apparently the angels had been attempting to create a heavenly warrior to match the special children Azazel was creating.   
Thankfully, the experiment wasn’t very successful, Michele, the soiled prophet, is defective. Every-time she had a vision of the future she ends up bleeding profusely. The blood loss, caused by her prophethood interacting with the cocktail of Grace and demon blood is slowly killing her.

What with the wholesale massacre of angels in the last ten or so years, heaven has managed to lose track of their little Frankenstein, angel grace creation.

Intriguingly, all unaware, the soiled prophet also appears to have some kind of connection to Lucifer, has witnessed glimpses of him chained up in Crowley’s dungeon.  
Of course, the silly little bleeding-heart nitwit thinks Lucifer is some innocent victim. And thankfully Moose and Squirrel have ignored her hand wringing over him.

Michele has also been receiving some snippets from Kelly Kline’s Devil spawn, and infuriatingly is partially to blame for the bloody things continued existence.

Predictably and moronically, the Winchester’s have grown attached to the little hobbit housewife, and amusingly Samantha also seems to have developed a strange slightly risqué oedipal blood born fascination with her. Despite all the contact via email and Skype neither Winchester had been smart enough to read Michele’s flaming fanfiction story, which in Crowley’s mind, just goes to prove they are _still_ utter morons.

Castiel meanwhile finds and abducts Kelly Kline. He kills Dagon with a little bit of help from the nephilim and goes on the run with the mother, refusing to let the Winchester’s remove the child’s grace.

Crowley decides to use the prophet as his own tool in the hunt for Kelly’s child and to gain spoilers on his endless chess game with the Winchesters.  
He plans to get the woman addicted to demon blood and manipulate her in much the same way Ruby did with Sam.

Popping into her kitchen, Crowley is gratified to see that his reputation has proceeded him. The mongrel prophet is pleasantly terrified of him, and quite rightly so.  
But instead of fleeing or fighting, she tells him she is sorry over his loss of his son Gavin, and thanks him for the part he has played in saving the world over the past 10 years.

Oddly gratified by the acknowledgement, he offers her the demon blood suggesting that it will stop her being the helpless lame duck damsel of her own story and will give her the power to play with the big boys.

Michele refuses, saying she knows he’s always playing an angle and she isn’t going to eat the Apple like Eve did. Tells him she’s on God’s side of the fence and if she needs power she’ll go to God, otherwise she simply plans to play the part that was written for her.

Infuriated, Crowley decides to force the blood down her throat. But something stops him, (though he can’t quite remember what.) Deciding it mightn’t be wise to power her up with more demon blood against her will. He instead threatens her family, demanding that she provides him with spoilers from her visions; and reminds her that she’s a long way from any kind of help. Tops it off by cautioning her that if she tells the Winchester’s about their little chats he’ll abduct her autistic child and gift him to a pedophile.

Crowley has always felt a strange jealousy towards Sam.  
He resents the way Sam looks down on him, despite everything he’s done for them over the years.  
He hates how he gets no gratitude or respect from Sam in particular; despite how they share many affinities, such as blood addiction, and Dean; Sam always acts like he’s superior and to good to give Crowley the time of day. 

The idea of terrorising, subverting and using the woman Sam has come to care for seems like a fitting bit of revenge. So when on one of his visits the woman has a vision and literal passes out in his lap, bleeding, Crowley takes the opportunity to take a taste what Sam has been so titillated and mesmerised by. The prophet’s blood.

The high from that little taste is just as bitter-sweet as it was with Sam’s blood all those years ago. He tells himself he’s not having a relapse or falling back into his old addiction and he can control it.

But finds himself visiting the woman more and more, availing himself of the blood she keeps leaking everywhere.

She’s a strange little thing, impossibly naive and sentimental. The stupid little thing even preaches at him about God, thinking everyone can be redeemed and forgiven. Even him.  
It’s strange, but Crowley finds his relationship with the prophet irritating and restful by turns.  
Like the Winchester’s, she knows all his greatest hits, but unlike the Winchester’s she’s of no real threat to him (even if she won’t stop with her wittering on about repentance, love and forgiveness.)

He secretly enjoys his little visits to her backwater home on the other side of the world, and carving out a few hours of respite from the drama and tediousness of his schedule.   
Almost against his will he comes to respect her, for the strength, and passive resistance she faces his invasion with. _She_ doesn’t enjoy his visits, but he finds her quiet dedication to living by what she preaches and her love and care for her defective children... oddly admirable.

Michele’s illness caused by the blood loss grows worse with each vision. One day he turns up to find her in the grip of a fever, she confides to him that she’s hoping to die, it’s her grand escape plan. Once she’s dead he won’t have any reason to threaten her family any more.

Irritated by her failing health, Crowley taps out one of the soul-contracts (he has a stash of such contracts which he’s added a sub-clause into, allowing him to add his own requests in on top of the item the owner sold their soul for.) Using the sub clause Crowley resets the damage the visions have being doing to the prophet’s body. She is horrified by proceedings but out manoeuvred.

It’s not a permanent solution but it does keep her ticking, to tell her tales and write her little story.  
  


Given a new lease on life Michele decides to make the best of the time she has left. She drives Crowley and her two year old to a playground by the beach. As they drive they have a discussion about Kelly and the nephilim and Michele tries to get him to understand, that Kelly’s child isn’t the world ending monstrosity Crowley thinks it is.

He considers the idea, and secretly ponders a new plan, to use Kelly’s child as a weapon against his enemies. Lucifer’s son, the nephilim has a bond with Crowley’s pet prophet and he can use that to control and manipulate the child in much the same way as he’s already using threats against Michele’s family to control her.

Reaching the playground Crowley is throughly nonplused when the prophet’s toddler demands he come play, because he looks _sad_.

The silly woman tries to explain to her child that Crowley isn’t able to play, and observes quietly that he didn’t have childhood and never learned how. Insulted, Crowley rejects the idea and reciting a laundry list of debauched acts which he considers to be play.

He expects her to be shocked and horrified, but instead Ma Cherie simply shakes her head and observes, with damnable certainty, that he has long ago lost any joy he felt in those things, including his position as King of Hell. He scoffs at her assertion, but her comment rings true. Then she promptly passes out with another vision.

Crowley finds himself babysitting the prophet’s child for a few minutes and amuses himself by offering the boy a lollipop and helping himself to a dose of his drug of choice, sanguis prophetas, blood of the prophets.

Once she regains consciousness and Crowley extracts his latest spoiler on his favourite fanfiction story, the prophet drags her son off onto the beach. He thinks she is using the high concentration of salt in the sand as a subtle form of torture, but later realises the woman is utterly clueless; when her dotey wee tike offers him a sea shell full of salt water and burns him.

Instead of being vindictively pleased with proceedings, Michele is horrified. And drags him off the beach to cleanse his hand, totally mortified with herself for not having thought about the salt factor.

Bemused, Crowley can’t understand her concern for his well being, he’s a demon after all and tells her as much.

To which she replies. “Yeah okay, so what? Doesn’t that mean you’ve been tortured enough.”

Crowley is shocked to realise, that despite everything, she means it.

Mean while in America, the Winchester’s mother goes missing, and the Winchester’s discover the BMoL are set on wiping them, and all of the American hunters out.

The boys try luring the BMoL into a trap to retrieve Mommy. But it backfires, because the BMoL have brainwashed their Mommy dearest, and they end up locked in their own Bunker suffocating.

Blowing a hole in the wall, the Winchester boys live to fight another day.

Meanwhile, Crowley takes everything a step too far. He steals a tube of Michele’s blood from the lab where he has followed her as part of his usual stalking activities.  
Spiking a syringe of the prophet’s blood into his veins is a million times better than drinking it, but has the unforeseen effect of allowing Lucifer to slip his leash and turn the tables.

Crowley only escapes death by hiding in a rat (something the prophet obtusely predicted on the first day he met her) as Lucifer stabs his usual meatsuit with an angel blade.

Lucifer cleans house and sets out to find his soon to be born son.

On the run and with nowhere else to go, Crowley turns up on Michele’s doorstep.

Like the Good Samaritan her bible lauds, Michele takes him in and gets him cleaned up. In return he mocks her stupidity and everything about her pathetic little life, while making himself obnoxiously at home.

Michele tolerates it all, turning the other cheek in good Christian fashion, right up until he starts poking at her feelings for, and relationship with the Winchester’s. When he tells her that Sam wants a lot more than just friendship from her and Ol’ Moose has all sorts of sinful adulterous thoughts going on under his ridiculous feminine haircut.

This finally gets the rise from her Crowley has been seeking. She loses her temper and tells him she’s aware. But she also knows Sam’s just lonely, and she’s not stupid enough to think Sam would actually be interested in her under real circumstances.

She continues by cooly pointing out, Crowley’s not so far above messed up humanity himself.  
She knows why he drinks Craige Scotch Whiskey. It’s because when he was a child his mother used to dose him with it to make him pass out and go to sleep, so she could be rid of him.   
It was abuse, she informs him, but it was also the closest he ever felt to being loved.   
She tells him the way his mother treated him as a child was wrong and that he deserved better and she wishes he’d had better. A mother that loved him.   
Because if he had, he would have never become what he was now.

Crowley, unable to formulate an appropriate response, makes a quick exit.   
  


Meanwhile Dean tries to reprogram his Mommy dearest. Why he bothers is beyond Crowley, considering that the woman wasn’t exactly mother of the year even before the BMoL tweaked the screws in her head. Crowley believes that ever since Amara brought her back, Mary Winchester has been acting as a minion of destruction in their lives. 

While big brother is fixing Mommy’s goard, Samuel takes a group of American hunters and wipes the invading BMoL off American soil once more.

Sam also discovers that the blonde man in Crowley’s custody was actually Lucifer, and that now Lucifer has somehow gotten free and it’s also rumoured that Crowley’s dead.  
The thought of Crowley’s death doesn’t bother Sam much. But the report that Lucifer is out hunting for his son and set on a one time only father-son world destroying tour bother him.

Crowley finds himself doing some soul searching. All his followers have turned on him. He’s lost his throne and as the prophet rightfully pointed out he’s come to loath his job. 

He goes to find the Winchester’s and is greeted with a punch in the face, the Winchester’s know about his trick with the cage spell and also know Lucifer is lose again and planning to form a world destroying double act with his soon to be born son. They are pissed off.

Crowley admits his failures and wants to help fix things, and is told Rowena is dead. (Crowley finds himself surprisingly affected by the news, but pretends not to be.) The only reason the Winchesters don’t kill Crowley is because he’s now the only one who knows the cage spell. Crowley does know the spell, but is aware he doesn’t have enough magical ability to cast the thing. Hoping privately that Sam’s innate magical ability will be enough to make up the difference, but having his doubts; he offers his skills and presents the proposal that after Lucifer is dealt with he close the gates of Hell as recommence.

He might have lost interest in ruling hell but he also figures having a prophet and the nephilim in his back pocket, with Heaven down to the dregs, if he closes the gates of Hell, slamming all the traitorous black eyed bastards in there to rot, it will leave him in a prime position as the major player on earth.

The Winchester’s settle to doing their utterly boring computer thing, searching for the bible worthy strangeness which usually surrounds the birth of a nephilim. and find a huge power outage centred on a house rented by one James Novack in North Cove Washington (which is a blazingly obvious clue which Castiel deserves slapping silly over.) Team free will prepares to mount up and ride to the rescue.

Only, Dean turns around and nails Crowley’s hand to the fricking table with his damnable demon knife and announces Crowley isn’t invited to play.

After wiggling free, Crowley runs back to New Zealand to fume about how poorly the Winchester’s had treated him, and garner sympathy from his pet prophet.

As expected his favourite Florence nightingale, Good Samaritan patches him up, but instead of sympathising with the unfairness of his unearned plight, she gives him a lecture on how repentance means turning away from and stopping past behaviour. Tells him that if he really has turned over a new leaf he will have to prove it, with his actions, not just his promises.

Then, as was par for the course between them at such moments, she then collapses into his arms with another vision.

Feeling disaffected with life and proffered the opportunity, Crowley decides to reward himself with a little pick-me-up in the form of a nice syringe of prophet blood.

Pleasantly medicated, Crowley waits for a story and is startled to hear that the imminent birth of Lucifer’s spawn is ripping a hole in the universe opening up a pathway to a bombed out apocalypse world where the Winchester’s were never born, and Heaven and Hell are in eternal deadlock, massacring helpless humanity inbetween them.

After explaining this, the prophet goes all weepy and woebegone understanding for the first time that Kelly Kline’s demise is now inevitable. She really harshes his blood buzz.

Tears in reality are a bastard of a thing, things have a tendency to come through, nasty things.

But it hits him suddenly, that maybe that is exactly the property that might save all their bacon.

Years ago whilst searching for power to cement his Kingship, he came into the possession a certain tablet, The Tablet of Destinies which details the creation and healing of rifts between realities. If they can get Lucifer to chase someone through the rift and trap him on the other side, Lucifer will become that other reality’s problem.

Excited, Crowley goes to retrieve the tablet of Destinies from where he has it hidden and stops to rub the Winchester’s noses in his elegant plan.

The spell to heal inter dimensional rips contains a fair list of ingredients, including angelic grace, the pesky stuff currently killing Michele Cherie, Crowley’s pet prophet, which just goes to show God really did take care of his own.  
Crowley can get what he needs to expel Lucifer and in doing so he gets to fix the prophet of Hobbiton.  
The happy coincidence touches him right where his bathing suit goes.  
After going on a scavenger hunt worthy of Laura Croft, and cadging the grace extraction device off the Winchester’s, he turns up back at the prophets door to collect 20 cc’d of glowy goodness, with which to save the world.

The prophet agrees to donate for the greater good, but insists he wash his hands before sticking a needle in her neck.

Akquessing he walks into her bathroom and right into a bleeding devils trap.

After bleating on about how she had seen the future and how he ends up screwing up and not taking enough grace, because he didn’t want to kill her, and how _this_ was the only way the world and her family can be saved. Michele walks out on him and goes to greeted her visitor.

The visitor is a BmoL agent come to murder her.

The agent stabs her with a poisoned blade, leaving her on the floor to bleed out before fleeing the scene.

By the time Crowley works out the way Michele has set up for him to escape the devils trap, her death is mere minutes away.  
Aggravated by the bloody minded waste of the situation and her dashing of his carefully laid plans to use her for his advantage, manipulating Lucifer’s spawn. And without any other recourse, Crowley sets about harvesting the Grace.  
Until the prophets oldest and most loved son bursts through the door and Crowley scents the smell of Michele greatest weakness. Her love for her children.


	2. No Fate But What We Make

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title taken from Terminator

**What Isn’t and Came To Be **

Chapter 1:

No fate but what we make

“Make a deal.” Crowley insisted again, pointedly ignoring the boy, the child didn’t matter to him, only the mother. But maybe the boy had a use.  
“Live. For him, he _needs_ you, Pet. The world needs you.”

The little brunette’s hands soothed through her son’s hair, pulling the boy closer to leave a bloody benediction on his forehead. 

“Weren’t supposed to be here… Smartest kid in the world, … love you more than anything …” the prophet whispered weakly to her son, ignoring Crowley. “Would fight Heaven and Hell for you…. y’re my whole world, like ‘m yours…never… doubt it.”

Maybe not ignoring him, he clenched his teeth sensing bitter victory, she was going to make a deal.  
He had her.  
Yet something inside him struggled against the wrongness of his own manipulation. A dirge like note of sour regret buried in his triumph. She didn’t deserve Hell.

Michele pushed her son aside slightly, blood stained hands reaching instead for Crowley.

“Choose this day…” she breathed the words softly and struggled to raise her face towards his...

But instead of kissing his mouth to seal the deal as he anticipated, her lips brushed his cheek and a flare of golden fire surged into him through the connection.

A torrent of flame edged images slammed into his brain.  
A tumble of phrases in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek.

Crowley saw himself die, again and again and again.

A dizzying array of death and fate. A million futures laid out.

“Now… now you see.” The prophet murmured, hushed and bloody in the dead air between them. 

“Please Crowley …choose right.” She begged.  
“I believe in you.”

As she spoke her hand found the Grace extraction device he’d sunk into her neck and forced the plunger higher, drawing the last drops of Grace from her body, she slumped back bonelessly. He watched it happen in shock. Stunned by the torrent of futures the prophet had imparted.

Michele died soon after, slipping away out of life without fanfare.  
Her chest just faltered into stillness, then, her green eyes grew flat and lifeless.

Crowley knew she was truly gone when her sheltering arms fell away from her son’s quivering form.

Trembling and traumatised, the boy continued to cling to his mother’s lifeless corpse, weeping mutely.

Kneeling there in the scarlet wash of the prophet’s shed blood, he looked down at the boy’s tear washed face and green eyes, eyes that were a taunting facsimile of the mother’s; and felt a sucking inescapable weariness, birthed by the visions still reverberating through his mind.

Finally, he slid the needle out of the dead prophet’s neck and dropped the apparatus back into the box, shoved it blindly into his coat pocket. Found and confiscated her iPhone; then climbed to his feet and collected the valise of spell ingredients from the kitchen counter.

He should leave, he told himself, he had a job to do.

But he paused again, still gazing down at the boy and his dead mother; mentally running through the contents of the valise and the spell to seal the rift between dimensions.

Bowl, birch wood tool, Tablet of Destinies, holy oil, lamb’s blood, Dead Sea brine, brimstone, Myhhr, Solomon’s seal, High John tuber and Hypericum stems. Mercury, the messenger of intent. Like all spells of it’s type, the spell to close the tear between universes required a set of specific sacrifices, poured out into each point of the pentical, each dedicated to one of the five magical elements.  
For air, Silphium. Once the most valuable spice in the ancient world. The plant had grown wild only in Cyrene and resisted all attempts at cultivation, and so it had been harvested into extinction. He had been forced to tap out a contract to locate one of the last examples of the spice, squirrelled away, buried as grave goods, in an as yet undiscovered Egyptian tomb beneath the Sahara desert.

Just call him Laura Croft, tomb raider.

To appease earth, Goofer dust was required. The hoodoo staple needed to be concocted by his own hands, using his own gravedirt as a base to which he added a noxious mix of other, more harmful substances. That one had been time consuming, but a fairly easy ask… as long as you were already dead and had a grave to plunder. 

For fire, the spell required Phoenix ash, unfortunately the Winchester’s had used all of the ash they retrieved from 1861 to kill Eve, mother of Monsters.

Phoenixes were rare, and rarer still now, after he was done. He’d been forced to tap out another contract to locate the nasty beastie. A Luger round forged from a repurposed Angel blade had been as good as a bullet from Samuel Colt’s mythical gun.

Water, called for water from the fountain of youth. The Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León hadn’t been crazy, the place was real, and still existed after a fashion.

He’d been forced to tap out another contract, his last, to obtain the location.

Turned out the fount was sunk in an underwater cavern, the island housing it had been plunged into the ocean off the eastern coast of Miami by tectonic activity, long before Fergus Macleod had walked the earth.

And… now the secondhand grace of an angel laid heavy in the pocket of his overcoat, the sacrifice to appease aether. 

There was one other item the tablet called for to close the rift, but it appeared that would take care of itself.

He should go, he told himself again; the world needed saving and he’d been Winchestered.

But instead he looked down at the boy again. Eight years old she said, the same age he had been when his mother abandoned him in the market square.

Something was nagging at him, it had to do with the child.

Then, _finally_ , it hit him. His little prophet hadn’t seen everything. The child’s presence was proof of that. And that meant the versions of the future he’d viewed weren’t the only ones possible, nor were they set in stone.

He’d been fooled by the prophets blind faith in her God and her visions of the future. Tricked into believing he couldn’t save her by her own insistence. Now, he had fumbled it and allowed her to slip from his grasp.

Furious at the swindle, Crowley clenched his fist around the handle of his valise, it creaked under the strain, causing him to look down at it and realise, belatedly, what it held.

Water from the fountain of youth. Enough to heal and cleanse his stupid little prophets wounds, leaving more than enough to perform the spell and seal the rift.

He’d let himself become overwhelmed by the narrative of martyrdom, been blindsided by the creep of unfamiliar emotion and moronically let his trump card slide through his fingers.

“Bollocks!”

He’d been offered option A or B, and made the Mark’s mistake. The mistake of thinking there were only two options, two bad choices, neither of which allowed him to win the game.

But he wasn’t a mark… there was always a third option. The ‘or.’

The option you had to find for yourself.

Allowing his eyes to flick to demonic red, he surveyed the living room with his metaphysical sight.

The prophet’s spirit still lingered, as did her reaper, come to wing her off to heaven.

In the pocket of his overcoat, opposite the grace extraction syringe, Crowley felt the weight of the small Luger pistol his R&D team had created to shoot bullets smelted from repurposed angel blades.

He hadn’t lost yet, and he didn’t intend to, not now that he saw a way to win. 

Disorientated by death, Michele’s spirit lingered by the boy, her reaper intent on convincing her to leave the child and pass on with it to heaven.

It was the easiest thing in the world to raise his Luger and put a bullet between the distracted reapers eyes.

Then, moving quickly, he shoved the traumatised child to one side and busied himself strip searching the prophet’s rapidly cooling corpse; ignoring the child’s escalating cries of objection over the invasion and indignity done to his nearest and dearest.

Finally Crowley found what he was looking for.  
Hidden on the prophet’s left foot, concealed beneath her ridiculous, fluffy cat sock. Symbols inked onto the bloodless skin atop her small foot with an everyday marker pen.  
Symbols that prohibited demonic possession and any form of infernal transport.

He stared at them with gritted teeth, stoking his irritation into a simmering rage.  
He was heartily sick of his damnable little prophets unwelcome art projects and scheming.

Once found, the symbols were easy enough to obliterate. The smell of her charred skin filled him with pleasant anticipation, once this was all over with, he was going to punish her for all of this, and he was going to enjoy every damn minute of it.

Gripping a hand around the dead prophets jaw, he popped her mouth open wide, and loosened his hold on the meat of the moderately successful literary agent. Poured himself out in a cloud of red smoke and down, into that invitingly open throat. Seated himself deep inside the prophet’s vacated corpse, now pinned beneath the slumped, empty body of the literary agent wearing bloody black Armani.

….

Crowley sat up, pushing his usual meatsuit away from where it had fallen slumped across his new bloody, naked, femininely endowed, chest.  
He took a breath in, and forced the injured heart beneath those breasts into a ragged, lagging rhythm.

Sweeping blood clotted hair away from his face, he adjusted the glasses perched on his nose and reached out a bloody, diminutive hand to fumbled inside the valise. Extracted the vial of water from the fountain of youth, and downed half of it.

Crowley concentrated for long moments on forcing the dead body he inhabited to mimick the actions of life, until the waters dispersed within it and their curative effects took hold. Healing the stab wounds littering his torso and cleansing away whatever poison the British Man of Letters had used to double ensure the assassination of the Winchesters little friend.

Quite literally forcing the body he inhabited back to life.

Around him the prophet’s body began to tick over automatically with the mundane functions of life, no longer requiring the exerted force of his will to make it function.

During the swap meat his hold on the prophet’s child had slipped, evidenced by the warm cannonball of human angst that impacted and clung to the newly healed and resurrected body he now wore.

Good, he had the bait.

Crowley sat up still further and ruffled the boy’s hair.

Now came the tricky bit, something he’d never actually attempted before, especially like this, why would he, he was a demon, metaphysical CPR wasn’t usually in Hell’s wheel house.

He had a functioning body, he just needed to recapture the prophet’s soul and spirit, and reinsert them where they belonged. Get it done before another reaper appeared, to finish it’s dead brethren’s task.

Hooking most of himself firmly within the prophet’s meat suit, Crowley allowed a few strands of his red smoke essence to extrude outwards.

“I need you to call your mother, MacGuffin.”

His normal voice issuing from the prophet’s throat made the child cringe and gasp, looking up at him in horror. The boy struggled to reel away and escape from the smoking, hideously wrong, red eyed thing inhabiting his mother’s body. But, even in the diminutive body Crowley had demonic strength.

“Call her, boy!” He insisted digging his fingers deeper into the meat of the child’s thin arms.

The child screamed.   
As expected, the mother’s soul and spirit were drawn in by the child’s anguish and horror.

Quick as a flash, he reached out the ropes of his extruded smoke and captured her. Twined his essence tightly around Michele and drew her back into her own healed body, like a fisherman landing a fish into a boat.

Headily, he experienced the friction of her squirming and fighting against him in the shared confines of flesh. It sent delicious shivers into his core as she tried, fruitlessly, to reject his hold over her and the utter unholy invasion of her body and soul.   
A marvellous taste of revenge, for every unwanted _feeling_ she had inflicted upon him, forcing him to stand by helpless and watch her die. Making him watch his carefully laid plans crumble.

Still, she flailed about uselessly, like that proverbial fish out of water within her own body. Attempted to escape once more into the freedom of death.  
But he held her tight, pinned her, tiny and helpless beneath the weight of his superior will and experience.

 _“I told you before, You can’t get away from me that easily, Darling.  
I’m the King of Hell. I know all sorts of swell tricks.” _He breathed the words into the non-exsistant space between their spirits, revelling still in the forced intimacy of their shared meatsuit.

_“You’re mine now pet, and I’m nowhere near done with you.”_

Then, her soul registered the child held in their shared arms.   
Chuckling with amusement he tightened his grasp on the child, drawing another shriek of protest from the boy.

 _“I go where I want, I do what I want. And when I say jump, they all ask how high, on the way up. You don’t say ‘no’ to me, are we clear?!  
_ _Take the wheel or I’ll break his arm.”_ It was a threat and a promise. He could ride her body any way or how he desired, and her God would do nothing.  
He could use her hands to inflict any damage he wanted and she knew it. He had her beat, knew her weakness, and wouldn’t shy away from exploiting it to it’s fullest.

The fight went out of her.  
He knew it would. She would submit to anything in the name of protecting her child. He felt the moment when spirit and soul meshed with flesh.

** **

Dominance asserted, he withdrew himself from inside her body and back into his favoured meatsuit, climbed off her naked body and straightened his clothing fastidiously.  
Left her shuddering and gagging in his wake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to the clever reader who rightly pointed out that Crowley had what he needed to save the prophet sitting there in his valise the entire time, he just didn’t realise it.  
> Thanks also to my friend and fellow writer PiscesPenName, who listened to be whinge about how this AU branching scenario of TTYH had started really bugging me and wouldn’t let me write the story I was supposed to be working on. She advised the only sane course of action to get it out of my head would be to write it down. And then she kindly helped me name it, by suggesting a spin on the season 2 episode “What Is and What Should Never Be.”


	3. Deal Or No Deal

**What Isn’t And Came To Be**

Chapter 2: Deal Or No Deal

Her throat was on fire, she felt like she was choking.

Coughing and gagging, Michele found herself disconcertingly alive.

Crowley was kneeling over her, one hand gripped painfully around her shoulder, his eyes cutting and intense.  
Johnny was crying somewhere, close by.

“I’m alive,” was that a statement or a question, she couldn’t tell, “how?”

He stared down at her smiling slyly. “I’m the King of Hell darling, I know all sorts of swell tricks.” His voice was dark and intimate, as was the way he squeezed her shoulder for emphasis.

Looking away from his eyes she turned her gaze down, to glare at his hand, trying to subtly express her distaste for the way he was invading her personal space, once again.  
And realised to her horror that she was naked.

With a squeak of mortification she scrambled backwards, away from the demon until her back collided with the wall behind.  
She curled into a ball, trying to shield herself from view.

Crowley’s smile widened.

“Why am I naked. _What did you do?_ ” She gasped fumbling for her discarded shirt, and found to her horror, that it was nothing but rags

“Oh, relax, pet.   
While I can’t deny that I’ve thought of desecrating your corpse a time or two. I wasn’t in the mood.  
Besides, I can do better.” He added scornfully.

“Then… why…?”

Crowley glanced away. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you that scribbling on your skin can give you cancer. It’s an ugly, nasty habit.”

“The warding?”

“Yes, the bloody warding!” He snarled, and suddenly he was standing over her, eyes swimming with red.”

“You brought me back. H-how? You’d tapped out your contracts, I didn’t make a deal… there’s no way—.”

“You don’t see _everything_ , do you pet. You didn’t see,” Crowley looked over his shoulder and waved towards where Johnny was curled up in a hedgehog ball in the corner. _“MacGuffin_ over there, in any of your visions did you? No, no you didn’t...”

“MacGuf—“ she repeated slowly, then it hit her, Johnny…  
  


“Oh God. No! Please no!”

Crowley’s grin widened, shark like as she made the horrified leap of logic. “Lets just say G-O-D wasn’t involved.   
Myself and your darling boy however...”

Despair clogged her throat. “Please Crowley, please. Don’t tell me. You didn’t talk my eight year old, autistic son into making a deal _for his soul._ Don’t tell me that.”

The demon smirked. “I won’t tell you that, if you insist.   
Still, it’s a Hell of a plot-line isn’t it? A little boy’s unheeding love for his mother, the ultimate sacrifice. And we have to ask ourselves, is yours truly the hero or the villain of the piece. Read on to find out.”

“Please Crowley, take it back, _I’ll do anything.”_

“Anything? Darling.   
You’ll do anything _now_. Don’t kid yourself you won’t. Besides, if I undid what I did, the only thing you’d be doing would be sitting in a cell up in heaven, reliving your greatest hits.  
I have plans for you, Kitten.”

“You can’t do this, Lucifer’s going to win, he’s going to burn the world… Don’t you remember, didn’t you see... “ tears leaked down her cheeks as she begged him to understand, to see what he’d done.

“Oh I saw, and it was all very horrific and bloody, blah blah. But you can’t argue the facts, you didn’t see any of this, did you.  
This is all new.   
‘There is no fate but that which we make.’ That’s the whole point.   
Choice and Consequence.   
Now be a dear and let’s get going.” He reached down and pulled her to her feet.

“Going?” She asked dully, still struggling to cover her body with her hands.

“Well I can hardly leave you here, now can I? You’ve made it abundantly clear you can’t be trusted.”

Dragging her with him, Crowley strode across the room and picked up her shellshocked son, effortlessly.

“As for the lad, let’s just say, we are now _both_ invested in his future.   
I’m prepared to leave the rest of your family here, to live out their lives unmolested. A token of my good will, as it were. _As long as you behave yourself.  
_ I’ve even organised to endow your husband with a hefty life insurance payout upon your expected, but untimely demise. They’ll be rich, and with you dead and buried the men of letters will have no reason to come sniffing about.”

“And _Lucifer?_ Are you mad, have you forgotten what he’s going to do?”

“Hardly. But see, I’ve got the grace.” He patted his coat-pocket with the hand clamped around her wrist; coincidentally pulling her arm away from where she was attempting to shelter her breasts.

Exhausted beyond words she gave up the pretext of modesty, he was right, he had Johnny’s soul, she’d do anything to save her son from Hell.  
She just stood there limply as he eyed her up and down, then shrugged.

“Same overall plan, pet. Lock the Devil away in the bombed out apocalypse world.   
After which we whisk Kelly Kline’s spawn away and perform a partial grace extraction.   
Raise the child of Satan to be a _real boy,_ without psychotic leanings. Whilst instilling a deep abiding love for his planet _and new family_.   
Of which I intend to take on the paternal role, of course.”

Crowley raised her blood smeared hand to his lips and kissed it almost gallantly.   
_Almost_ gallantly, except for the way he swiped his tongue across her knuckles lapping at the tacky drying blood on her hand. Her blood.   
A small shudder transmitted to her through his grip. His eyes rolled back and fluttered closed, as he let out a small, punchy breath of pleasure.   
The whole thing made her feel soiled and dirty.

“If, at some later point the Devil manages to rip the universe a new one. Jack Kline becomes our ‘in case of emergency,’ plan.” He handed off her son into her arms as he spoke, and picked up the leather suitcase he’d arrived with.

“Now, shall we?” He asked with a courtly gesture.

Crowley didn’t wait for an answer, he snapped his fingers and suddenly they were somewhere else. 

The somewhere else wasn’t what she expected, it was a narrow cramped space, covered wall to ceiling with black spray painted symbols. The furniture and Formica kitchenette were outdated and worn. Crowley dropped her wrist and stepped away.

Suddenly the whole space lurched and shuddered, her feet went out from under her. But with a dismissive flick of his wrist from Crowley. Michele found herself, cradling Johnny, seated in the checked arm chair opposite the old style T.V.

“Juliet, darling, stand down. It’s Papa.” He called out, opening a door, concealed by a fall of floor to ceiling striped curtains.

Something invisible barrelled past him into the room, knocking him back a step.

“Yes, yes.” Crowley crooned indulgently, “I missed you to.” His hand patted at some invisible thing four feet off the ground in rough affection. 

“No, as long as she and her pup stay inside the R.V, _you may not eat them.  
_ If she tries to escape, well then, you have my permission to chew on them a little.” Crowley turned away from the invisible thing and started puttering about the kitchenette, opening cupboard doors and the refrigerator.

“Is that—“

“Hellhound, yes.” He answered glancing over his shoulder at empty air.

“Daddies favourite aren’t you Juliet? Yes you are, yes you are.”

Suddenly, the invisible thing Crowley had let into the room was right there, in her space, looming over her and her son. Malignant dread flooded over her as a sweltering blast of air that reeked of sulphur and rotted meat washed over her face. Then something that felt like a handful of roofing nails scraped over her knee.

Johnny seemed to rise from his catatonia and jerked away from it, shrieked in her arms.

“No!.” Crowley barked. “Mine. Bad girl!” The demon made a cutting gesture and the Hellhound was batted away from her to collide with the metal side wall of the mobile home. The room lurched.

“Mine!” He repeated again in a near growl and was answered by a low whimper. “Not for you. Bad girl!  
Out and guard!”   
The demon pointed to the door.

The R.V rose an inch on its shocks as the Hellhound exited.

Crowley kicked the door shut, then opened a cupboard to pull out a bottle and glass.

“Questions, comments, concerns?”

“You shouldn’t hit your dog.”

The demon chuckled and looked at her over the rim of his crystal tumbler. “Of course. Cruelty to animals…” He shook his head looking amused.

“Let me explain something, pet, Juliet isn’t a Pekinese. She’s a bloody Hellhound, emphasis on the bloody. They exist for one purpose, to savagely rip human-beings into bloody rags, tear their souls out and drag them down to Hell. The moment she got a taste of your blood, her instincts were urging her to do just that, with you.   
Oh and FYI, now she’s had a taste of you **,** there’s nowhere on Hell or earth you can hide from her.   
Deal or no deal.   
The only reason you’re still alive is because I’m top dog and you’re mine.”

  
He downed the rest of the glass of scotch and dusted off his hands.

“Stay inside and don’t answer the door.   
Time, she’s a wasting, pet, and I still need to go clean up _your mess,_ before I head out to North Cove and meet up with the three musketeers.”

“Crowley, wait! Where are we? And what do I do if you don’t come back?”

“You’re not in Kansas, or should I say Godzone, anymore, Toto.  
And I suggest you get down on your knees and pray I do come back.   
You’ve got a weeks worth of food.   
After that, your choices are, starve or become puppy chow. Sucks being you, doesn’t it, Kitten.

Toodles.” 

With that, Crowley was gone.


	4. A Single Tear

** What Isn’t And Came To Be **

Chapter 3: A Single Tear

She was asleep when he returned, curled in the plaid armchair around her son, like a cat with it’s last remaining kitten.

Her hair was damp from a shower, drying into ringlets, and perfuming the air with the subtle scent of the shampoo she’d used.  
His shampoo, he noted.

She was wearing one of his silk shirts too, sleeves far too long, and rolled up, like a child playing dress up in Daddies clothes.   
He ought to be irritated by that. Her going through his things without permission.

But the sight sent a lazy primordial satisfaction seeping through him.

His prophet.   
He’d wrenched her out of heaven’s grasp, and now here she was, at his mercy, wearing nothing but his shirt, and preferred scent.   
Only thing he could do to announce his claim more clearly would be pattern that soft skin with the bruised imprints of his fingers. Or piss on her.   
But, those things were statements without any fineness or class.

Besides, you always trapped more little butterflies with honey than vinegar.   
He needed his little innocent, harmless butterfly didn’t he?   
He needed her to wrangle the nephilim and diffuse it.

Kelly was long dead by the time he’d dashed through the rift and seen it close behind him.

A quick trip to one of his many lockup’s then back to North Cove.

A little misinformation and some Emmy worthy acting had liquidated Mary Winchester and gotten her out of the way.  
Literally.   
Her own fault, really.

Mary Winchester was a rash and arrogant individual, without even a shred of motherly compassion.   
She got what she deserved for attempting to murder the baby abomination with a fake archangel blade.

It was hardly his fault she hadn’t wanted to trust the bleeding and injured King of Hell to do the dispatch job; instead snatching up the blade out of his hands, before he crumpled.

Marched off, leaving him, all grievously wounded and possibly dying (for all she knew,) on her warded doorstep like a flaming bag of dog poop.

He wished he’d been able to watch Sam and Dean’s traitorous bitch of a mother march that expertly crafted but, utterly useless, facsimile blade up the stairs and plunge it into Lucifer’s spawn.

He hadn’t missed the resulting blast however, that had been obvious. It had blown out every window on the homey little rental Castiel had found.

The devil spawn had squalled on, unabated. Lusty, strong and strident as ever. Crowley was willing to bet the nursery wall, Kelly Kline had painted so lovingly with an apple tree and her son’s Real boy name, ‘Jack,’ was now repainted in sanguine, red.

The nephilim might be new born, but survival was a reflex.  
There was no way Crowley was willing to risk his own hide by laying a hand on it.

He needed someone guileless as his patsy.

He stood, watching that guileless patsy sleep the sleep of the good, for a solid five minutes and let his meatsuit’s blood drip and patter unnoticed to the R.V trailer’s floor. He schemed his schemes and planned his next moves, with her right there all unawares.

Finally he cleared his throat.

Her lashes fluttered open slowly, reluctantly, with that heedless lack of caution only the innocent ever truly carried.

“Well, well look at you, all tussled and morning after, wearing my shirt.” 

A frown creased her brow at his voice, sleep pushed aside.  
But he saw none of the expected fear or recriminations writ on her guileless, girl next door face.

Plot twist. Somehow, she appeared to know nothing of the dastardly deeds he’d perpetrated. Maybe he wouldn’t need to threaten the boy for this part, after all.

The thought flitted through his head then, that maybe he’d bought himself a pup. Maybe the woman before him was no longer prophet of the lord. She _had_ died.

Still, that might actually be to his advantage.

With Sam dead, (though unlikely to stay that way) and the rest of Team Freewill locked up in the Apocalypse world with Lucifer.   
Prophetic visions of the Winchester Gospels would only prove a distraction.

Meanwhile, pushing her hair away from her face, Michele sat up and grabbed her glasses. “Crowley?” She breathed his name low, careful not to disturb the boy.

He looked down on her, head cocked. “You’re wearing my shirt.”

Arms folded defensively over her breasts, Michele Chadwick lifted her chin and pouted up at him militantly.  
“You dragged me out of my home, naked and covered in blood and you’re complaining—“

“Oh darling, I’m not complaining.” He cut her off, and eyed her slowly up and down, wetting his lips with a wolfish leer. “I have to say however, you only in _red_... that was… mouthwatering.”

The look on her face was wary and complicated.   
Her eyes dropped to her sleeping son before flicking back up to his face once more, tensely.   
The game had changed and she knew it.   
He could see her trying to calculate the safest course of action.

“With all due respect, your Highness.” She spoke soft and careful, eyes lowered, only to flick back up to his. “Please don’t tell me I’m your own personal brand of heroine. You’re better than that.” 

Hmm… interesting.   
A touch of humour, neither insult nor come-on.

He let a pleased chuckle escape, allowing it to morph and be chased by a cough that splattered his mouth and hand with brilliant red. Watched those pretty green eyes widen in surprise.

“Oh.” She was on her feet, and at his side, in a shot, “you’re hurt.” 

“Caught a few bullets, it’s,” he stumbled then, theatrically, “nothing—“ Just as he knew she would, she slipped under his arm, to support a portion of his weight, and help him into a chair.

“Sit down.” Her small hands were already on him, tugging at his clothing.   
Checking his wounds and letting out genuine sounds of dismay at what she found.

He let her do her pointless Florence Nightingale thing, repressing a smile.   
She really was, just too easy.

“I…” she looked up at him, small hands splayed over the meat he wore, eyes wide and scared by the injuries, “I think at least one caught your lung. This is bad…Crowley….”

“First aid kit under the sink,” he waved a nonchalant hand. “Take the bullets out, patch me up. Not like I can die.” He bared bloody teeth, and coughed again sending her scurrying.

She was more gentle than he would have liked, but surprisingly sure and efficient, all things considered. Removing bullets couldn’t be part of her usual repertoire.

She hated it, he could tell. Hated causing him more pain, the way her eyes glistened and her breaths came shallow and fast. Like the wings of a trapped butterfly brushing against his exposed skin, in half contained panic, as she worked. 

It sent little shivers of sharp biting enjoyment into his core.

He played it up, exaggerating his discomfort simply to heighten her distress. And gloried in it, the way he still, even now, could fool her into thinking of him as a man, and not the monster he was. How easily he could manipulate her into stoically repressing her own distress, in favour of servicing his enjoyment. 

Not wanting the experience to end too soon, he even urged her to push her fingers into the wounds, using the pretence of possible bullet fragments.

The intimacy and immediacy of those small fingers sliding slick and hot inside his ravaged meat, an act of faux penetration. Drew small bitten off gasping shudders from his lips.

The sounds she took for pain, were anything but.

By the time she was finished her hands were smeared in gore and he was riding a pleasant lassitude like buzz of satisfaction.

Shooting himself had been damnably awkward, and had ruined some good Armani, but it had all turned out well worth it.  
  


He sat, in the grip of afterglow, bare chested but for the bandages and medical tape, sipping at a glass of scotch she’d brought him. And watched her wash her hands and tidy everything away. 

Her eyes repeatedly cut across to where her boy lay sleeping as she worked, fearful of the child waking and gathering up another load of trauma.

Finally she came back, pulling up a chair across from him. There was a smear of his blood across her cheekbone, dark in the low light of the trailer. He manfully repressed a greedy urge to smudge his thumb across it, then force the bloody digit into her mouth and watch her choke and gag around it like she had on his smoke.

“Is there anything else, I can—” she asked, concern for his well being brimming in those large empathetic eyes.

“You’re wearing my only clean shirt.” He pointed out and paused a beat, watched her hand rise to her throat, but didn’t wait to see if she would rebel.

“Keep it.” He shrugged, with the magnanimity of a generous King. Allowing her modesty in light of her other acts of service.

“What happened, Crowley?” She asked finally.

Letting out a slow breath he placed the glass down in front of him. Allowed his shoulders to slump and looked away.  
Added a small stuttering breath of despair and rubbed at the stubble along his jaw.

“You didn’t see?” He asked without looking up. Low and intimate, a weary soldier about to share the horrors of war.

She shook her head.

“The rift’s closed, Lucifer is on the other side of it.”

“But?”

He let the silence stretch and forced his meatsuit’s eyes to well up, but didn’t allow that single manly tear to spill.   
Not yet.

Another shuddering breath. “Sam, Dean and Castiel they didn’t make it back through. I tried Darling, but…” Again he waited, expecting one of her visions to inform her of his treachery.

But nothing happened, there was nothing but empathy and grief in the eyes that clung beseechingly to his face.

“I don’t know what happened but Castiel wasn’t with the Boys when Lucifer chased them through. I was already on the other side. Had to use that grace you sacrificed to set up the spell. When they came through, Dean started shooting Lucifer with the automatic weapon, the one that fired bullets made of angel blades, Sam…. He helped me with the spell.” An almost visceral flashback made him close his eyes and forced that single prepared tear to leak down his cheek, moments before he intended to shed it.

“The gun jammed, and Lucifer started beating on Dean like he was a redheaded stepchild.  
It went to Hell, Pet. Literally…” he dropped his eyes to his bruised and bloody fists, clenched before him on the cheap Formica RV table. Fists he’d bloodied not half an hour before. Not by fighting Lucifer, but by punching a wall.

“You were right,” he gritted. Voice as flayed and bloody as he’d left Sam, laying in the dirt.   
“Sam… I think he’s dead. I tried to get Dean to flee, after, to leave, but he was too over wrought, by Sam… He shot me.” He shook his head as if bemused, hand rising to finger at the bandages wrapping his chest.

“…Then Castiel turned up and he attacked Lucifer, like he thought, a broken used up seraphim was capable of beating the devil himself. None of us were thinking straight, after... Sam... I don’t blame them. There was no way Dean would leave his stupidly brave angel, and Castiel was blind with righteous fury.  
The spell was working and I’d left you here... I couldn’t let you die again, _not after I got you back…_ I…. I fled, like a coward.” He finished in a rush.   
Forced himself to his feet and strode away the few steps the cramped space of the R.V allowed.   
Ended up facing the wall. Like a child in disgrace, as if he were too ashamed to face her. “…And then the rift sealed itself shut…”

“I left them...” He gritted out, repeating himself, voice layered with as much self-hatred and bitterness as he could manage.

He stood there in silence for long minutes, letting breath tear ragged and harsh between his deceitful, lying lips.  
Knowing he sounded for all the world like a defeated, broken man, instead of the triumphant, returning King who had defeated all his foes with one clever plan.

He waited.

Until, he felt that tentative little hand on his shoulder, and turned to half collapse into her arms burying his face in her hair.

Wrapped himself around her, like she was his only route to salvation.

Above her head, Crowley laughed silently. Delighted, at the feel of her hot tears. Stinging with salt and true grief for the Winchester’s. They fell onto his bandaged chest as her hands rose in a benediction of unneeded comfort. Her soft little bleeding heart misinterpreting the motion of his body as silent, manful shudders of grief echoing her own. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 104


	5. Winning

** What Isn’t And Came To Be **

Chapter 4: Winning

This was taking too long! Crowley shifted on the balls of his feet, adjusting his grip on the emotional little ball of fluff that snivelled against his chest, and barely contained a sigh.

He looked around the R.V, bored.

Humanity, they were always leaking something, or crumpling under the weight of all their little feelings, it was surprising they got anything done.

_Feelings_ , he scoffed again internally, eyes roving restless over the cluttered motor home interior.

The ugly-as-sin décor from the late 70’s, and scrawled wardings in industrial black spray paint hadn’t improved any, since he’d last been holed up here. Hiding from Castiel, after the angel double crossed him and swallowed down all those purgatory souls. The feathered idiot had dubbed himself ‘the new god.’ But Castiel got his just desserts for the double cross. They all had, hadn’t they?

His eyes did a full circuit of the rundown vehicle in 2.4 seconds flat, and came back to rest on the boy, still asleep in the plaid armchair.

Johnny Chadwick, eight years old and high functioning autistic.

Most loved son of the only Prophet.

MacGuffin.

Leverage.

He eyed the child jaundicely and felt his gut clench.

_“You’ve changed since you started drinking my blood, it’s my fault, Sam’s fault. Kevin’s fault.  
We’ve all infected you… with the things we care about.” _The prophet had said that, and he had an inkling she might have the right of it.  
Killing a shifter wearing the boys face (to dress up the double murder scene for the husband and family) had been far too difficult for his liking, near on impossible truth be told.   
What other reason could there be. The boy meant nothing to him. The shifters even less.

At least he’d gotten to work out a little frustration, killing her doppelgänger. Got to kill her for getting herself killed, _and trying to leave him._

He ground his teeth and looked away from the waif.   
His own personal brand of heroin, she’d said. He was better than that, she’d said. Likening him to the sparkly vampire out of those novels idiot teenaged girls got moist over.

If he was the vampire of the piece, that made her the pointless little chit with all the agency of a cardboard cutout and the depth of a puddle.

He smirked to himself and petted her hair.

_Yes well, if the shoe fitted._

Even so, she was right in that at least _he_ was better than that.   
He promised himself again he’d stop the blood, and get clean.

It was then his eye caught on a glint of silver on the floor by the door.

A sharp little paring knife, out of place, laying there.   
The play of light along the stubby little blade was oddly disrupted, as if it were dirty or the surface marred.

He narrowed his eyes and flicked his wrist to call the blade to his hand.

It didn’t move.

_What the Hell?_

Dropping his arms, Crowley stepped away from the prophet sharply.

Anger kindling as he took the few steps to the door and bent down, to pick up the knife between thumb and forefinger, examine it.

Realised with a burst of hot irritation that the blade had been amateurishly engraved.

_What was it with this woman and her arts and crafts projects?_

Holding the pathetic little weapon away from his body as if he were holding a dead mouse, he swung back to glare at the tear stained prophet.   
Waved the weapon between them, brow arched, just so, in enquiry.

“Planning on killing me, Pet?”

The woman’s eyes flicked down to the blade in his hand.   
“No,” she shook her head in denial.

But the way she backed up and sidled between him and her son was hardly blameless.

“Tell me then, _Darling_ ,” he spat the endearment at her like it was a curse, and saw her flinch. “What other possible reason would you have for a blade with these symbols carved on it then, hmm?”

Her bottom lip trembled, cuing up more of the waterworks as she looked past him, to the door.

But, instead of attempting to flee or dissolving into a new wash of tears, she pulled herself together and took a shakey breath.  
Squared her shoulders and lifted her chin.

“As I understand it, Crowley, neither a Devils trap nor that binding sigil could do anything more than keep something demonic pinned down.” She said carefully. “You might not believe me, but I’m not an idiot.   
I didn’t make that knife for you.   
I made it for _if you didn’t come back.  
_ I actually did what you said and prayed you’d come home.”

Her hand reached behind her and rested on her sleeping son’s leg, tangled white knuckled in the fabric of the boys clothing.

“The child dies at the end of Cujo, Crowley; _because the mother waited too long.  
_ I … I wasn’t going to let that happen to Johnny. Not now… now he won’t _just_ _die_.” Her voice broke on the last two words and a tear slid down her cheek.

“I-I thought if the worst happened, if you’d left us here to die because you weren’t coming back… a devils trap and the binding sigil might work on the hound. That if I got really lucky, it might stop it.   
That it might give us, _or just Johnny_ a chance to run.”

He tilted his head and stared her down with narrowed eyes.  
“Run where exactly?”

“We’re in America, somewhere in Nebraska from the radio. So… Sheriff Mills, in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.”

She hadn’t just been sat here watching daytime television, while Daddy was at work. She’d been planning plans and scheming schemes.

Not Bella Swan this one.

Considering everything, it wasn’t an utterly stupid plan. Granted, Juliet would have probably ripped her to bloody rags. But the boy. Conceivably he might have made it. Juliet wasn’t the best at multitasking.

Michele turned away and picked up a sheet of paper and a bulky envelope from beside the armchair, holding them out.

Short and to the point, the unsealed sheet on top read.

_“Hello my name is Johnny Chadwick. I’m 8 years old, autistic and really scared right now. Please don’t touch me.  
_ _Please can you help me find Jodie Mills, she’s a sheriff in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.”_

The envelope was likewise addressed to Jodie Mills.

“If we both got out of here, I hoped Sherif Mills would help me get to North Cove Washington and find Jack. Otherwise… I just hoped Jodie would help Johnny.”

He hummed in the back of his throat, holding out an imperious hand for the papers.

Reluctantly she released her grip on the boy and took two cautious, halting steps forward. Coming just close enough to hand over the papers.

He clenched them in a tightly balled fist. Perhaps she wasn’t a traitor, perhaps she was telling the truth, but it still irked him that she’d had so little faith in him.

Allowing a fit of pique to incinerate the pages to ash, he tossed them back in her face.

She flinched and swallowed convulsively, ashes caught in her hair like snowflakes.

Stood there in front of him, breath coming fast and frightened between parted lips.

“I saved your bloody life!”

Again she flinched, arms wrapped around herself as if she were physically restraining herself, neither agreeing nor disagreeing with his words.

He let the silence stretch and studied her, waiting to see what she’d say or do next.  
Usually at this point of proceedings they made excuses or started to plead. The more manipulative ones, usually the women (but not always) would fall back on the mainstay of trying to fuck him.

Instead of any of the usuals, Michele let out a small huff and sank to her knees on the dingey linoleum, by his feet, head bowed, and simply stayed there.

Crowley licked his lips, frowning, and peered down at the woman.

Not what he expected….

But… oddly gratifying.

A feeling began to build in his chest, as if created and amplified by the first moments of stillness he’d experienced since everything went down.

It crested higher and higher as he stood there, looking down.

Until the euphoria crashed over him like a wave breaking against the shore.

He’d done it!

Beaten fate.

Beaten the schemes of God himself.

This, _this_ here and now surpassed everything he’d ever done before, even when he asended to take his place on the black throne of Hell.

No one had surrendered this to him out of apathy.

He’d played the game God himself said he couldn’t win, _and won._

Lucifer, God’s favourite, was not just caged but tossed out of the universe.

He’d finally grown enough balls to kick his toxic relationship with the Winchester’s, God’s go-to team, to the curb.

Castiel was history, and heaven down to a handful of angels, cowering behind the pearly gates.

And this here, _this_ was the cherry on the top.

The only Prophet of the Lord, down on her knees before him, submissive and subservient.

Waiting upon his whim.

The heady, sudden realisation, and the strange little gesture gave him more satisfaction than the entire backstabbing hoard of Hell cheering his name.

He’d earned this!

Staring down at her, he gloried in his moment.

Gloated in it.

The euphoria of his utter supremacy.

Finally, he bent. Hand falling heavy in a proprietorial caress.   
An indulgent benediction.

The Prophet tensed, trembling beneath his hand. Flinched like he was going to burn her, and he could, exactly as he had with the paper.   
She understood now.

He dragged his fingers slowly down her cheek, smearing the ashes of her petty plans, to run away and leave him, down her skin, and cradled her eggshell skull in the palm of his hand. Remembered how it had felt stabbing the shifter wearing her face.

He forced her chin up slowly to take in the full visual.

Her brimming green eyes, gazed up at him fearfully from under those dark tumbled locks.

Her terror pale cheeks, marked by tears, blood and ashes.

The way her white throat stretched painfully in his grasp, pulse drumming away hummingbird fast in her oh so snappable little neck.

_It really did it for him._

He could do anything he wanted and nothing and no one could, or would stop him.

He owned her.

As if hearing his thoughts she closed her eyes, tears leaking down her cheeks.

“God as my witness, Crowley. As long as you hold my son’s soul, I’ll never raise a hand against you or willingly leave you.  
You’ve won.” She vowed, miserable and defeated, eyes still closed in utter collapse.

He froze at the words.   
A small shiver tracing down his spine.

It was everything he wanted to hear.

But, was there something prophetic and vaguely dischordant moving just underneath the words?

A sudden fleeting urge to shake her and demand she look at him, fluttered low in his belly.

A need to check her eyes for the blooming flare of gold light.

But he rejected the impulse summarily.

Dropped her back to the floor with a mocking curl of his lips and turned away to retrieve his glass of scotch. Drowned the tiny flicker of unease with a long swallow.

He didn’t hold her son’s soul. He’d just led her to believe he did.

But he was a demon and knew in the end, belief was everything.

Ambling back over to her, he caught her eye meaningfully.

“While usually I’m all for scantily clad woman on their knees in front of me, Pet.   
Right now, you and I have _a little hell to raise.”_

“Jack.” Her comprehension of his witty little play on words pleased him no end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 152


	6. Be useful. Be good, be careful, don’t make him mad.

** What Isn’t And Came To Be **

Chapter 5: _Be useful. Be good, be careful, don’t make him mad._

“I saved your bloody life!” Crowley spat the words in her face, as if she should be grateful. Grateful he’d swindled her son and damned his soul to Hell; just to keep her on the rat wheel her life had become.

How could he not realise, that what he’d done to Johnny hurt her far worse than dying could?

But she could see it on his face. He thought he’d done her a favour.

If she knew anything about men like him, men like her father, trying to explain how she felt would only make things worse.   
Saying _anything_ would probably make it worse.   
Men like Crowley, they didn’t tolerate dissension or argument, they wanted wordless submission.

Somehow, she had to diffuse this, mollify him.   
Before he took his anger out on Johnny, like her father had with her as a child, far too often.   
That meant doing what he wanted.   
Treating him the way he believed he deserved.   
Like royalty.   
Like her king.   
She sank to her knees, head bowed.

Crowley just stood there, above her for the longest time, and she was terrified she’d done the wrong thing.

When his hand came down on her head and buried itself in her hair, it was all she could do not to pull away; and it occurred to her then, that the position she’d put herself in might have been a stupid, stupid mistake.

A king’s subject might go down on her knees to him.  
But so would his whore.

 _‘Anything? Darling.  
You’ll do anything now. Don’t kid yourself you won’t..’_ The words reverberated inside her skull as Crowley dragged his thick fingers bruisingly over her skin and forced her chin up to meet his gaze.

The carnivorous look on his face clogged her throat with terror. Pure predatory hunger, untempered by anything soft.

Like a child hiding under the covers and hoping the monster wouldn’t eat her, she squeazed her eyes shut. Hot tears oozing down her cheeks.

  
“God as my witness, Crowley. As long as you hold my son’s soul, I’ll never raise a hand against you or willingly leave you.  
You’ve won.” 

Just like that, he released her, dropping her to flounder on the floor.

When she dared to open her eyes again, he was across the room sipping his drink and watching her with a contemptuous smirk on his lips.

_You thought… Seriously, how stupid are you? I can do better._

His eyes mocked silently as he sauntered closer.

  
“While usually, I’m all for scantily clad woman on their knees in front of me, Pet…   
Right now, you and I have _a little hell to raise.”_

“Jack.” She whispered in willing agreement.

_Be useful. Be good, be careful, don’t make him mad._

The warm smile Crowley bestowed on her as he helped her to her feet and handed her a handkerchief was gallant and disconcerting. As if all that rage and menace. All that _vicious predatory hunger_ , he’d gazed down at her with, moments before, had never existed. 

Like it had all been a figment of her overworked, exhausted mind.

She could almost fool herself into thinking nothing had happened; but for the way her neck and jaw still throbbed dully from his grip.

How had C.S Lewis described Aslan? A lion. A King. Not safe. Not tame… that’s what she was dealing with here. But unlike Lucy, she didn’t have the reassurance Crowley was _good_.

She’d been lulled into a false sense of security by Crowley, by his finely tailored suits and cultured English accent, and where had that led her? More to the point, where had it led Johnny? She snatched a furtive glance in her son’s direction and felt a flood of relief, to see him still asleep and oblivious.

Crowley was studying her again, tapping the little knife against his thigh.

“You haven’t had a single vision since you died, have you?”

Biting her lip, she shook her head.

He eyed her speculatively, “Just throwing it out there, but between you and me, Pet. The man upstairs, his interest in you seems to have _waned_ _a tad,_ since you bled out on your lounge room floor.  
The Bible you’re so fond of, the supernatural books, ever notice how female characters tend to get … fridged.  
And children, especially ones like MacGuffin there… Well, they don’t feature long at all, do they?” The corner of his mouth quirked up. “Tragic really.”

_..._

Crowley transported them away from the mobile home with a sudden snap of his fingers; and it was all she could do to repress the cry of dissent clamouring up her throat like vomit.

 _Be useful. Be good, be careful, don’t make him mad._ She told herself again and again.

_But, oh please! Please, don’t take me away from Johnny.  
_ _He’s alone back there, somewhere in Nebraska, and I don’t even know where. There’s an invisible monster waiting outside the door._

_What if he wakes up and finds me gone?_

Johnny was just a child, a scared, broken little boy who needed her desperately; and she’d left him alone and defenseless.

First she’d done it by dying, left him alone with a demon, who tricked him into selling his soul. And now she was leaving him alone and unprotected with a Hellhound, that could kill him and drag his soul down to Hell.

It was _supposed_ to be her job to protect him.

She’d thought she was protecting him.

But she just keeps _failing_ , again and again.

Johnny didn’t even remember or know what he’d agreed to! When she tried to question him on his deal, he’d just babbled over and over about ‘Red Mummy’ and curled up in a ball, crying. Flinching every time she touched him. Everything she’d put him through, it had made him regress back to that shattered little boy he’d been when he was first diagnosed as autistic. 

This was her fault.

It was all she could do not to go down on her knees again and beg Crowley to take her back.

But he wouldn’t.

 _No. He had a job for her._ That’s what that vicious little jab about her visions had been, a reminder that she better be useful.

Was Crowley right? Had God forsaken her? Was this where her choice and consequence had led?

_Be useful. Be good, be careful, don’t make him mad._

Blinking away tears of self pity, Michele swallowed and looked around.

Crowley was once more immaculately attired in a charcoal suit and tasteful paisley tie, making her all the more aware and self conscious. She was out in the open, still barefoot and naked except for Crowley’s spare shirt.

The house before her was the one she’d seen in her visions. Surrounded on three sides by water and screened by trees. But missing the sizzling inter dimensional fracture that had been the rift.

It was a rustic little wooden cottage, with white, peeling paintwork and thick mats of verdant moss growing over its roof of dark tiles. The house ought to have looked quaint and idilic, but there was something wrong with the picture.

As Crowley half dragged, half led, her closer, with bare feet stumbling over the pebble littered ground, she realised what it was.

All the windows of the cottage were smashed out. The gausey lace curtains caught and billowing between jagged glittering teeth of broken glass.

Nearly buried beneath the sounds of bird song and the gentle lapping of waves came the hoarse, pitiful sound of a baby crying. One that had been left alone, crying and uncomforted for far too long.

“Jack.”

Crowley tipped his head. “Jack.” He agreed easily.

_Be useful. Be good, be careful, don’t make him mad._

Crowley picked his way up the front steps; ambling easily with his hands in his pockets, and she followed him like his well trained dog. He stopped a few paces away from the front door. Grimaced and shuffled his feet.

“Castiel’s got the place warded to the teeth!” He gritted and held out the little paring knife, pressing it into the palm of her hand.   
“Time to earn your keep.”

She stared at him in wide eyed panic, “you want me to…?” She looked down at the knife in horror, “I...”

Crowley let out a snort of distainful amusement. “For the _warding_ you muppet. That’s assuming you aren’t completely useless.”

_Be useful. Be good, be careful, don’t make him mad._

Leting out a relieved breath she nodded and approached the door, hesitated in front of it and glanced back at him, “do I, do I _knock_?”

The demon scowled. “Maybe you could offer to share the good news of your lord and saviour with Mother Winchester over cups of tea.   
_No, of course you don’t bleeding well knock!_ ” He hissed giving her a shove.

She twisted the handle and edged the door open and slid inside.

The interior of the house was much nicer than she expected, old style wallpaper, varnished wood paneling and heavy wood furniture, with any shadows dispelled by pools of golden light cast by a scatter of side lamps.

The wardings weren’t scrawled over the walls with spray paint like she expected, instead they were carved into the woodwork around the doors and windows.

Outside, she caught sight of Crowley, bent over with a stick drawing in the dirt. Complex circles, something that looked like a crossed out trident, and a warped unfinished star.

Angel wardings.

Where was Mary and why wasn’t she doing anything to console Jack?  
The shattered windows and the lack of any other human sounds but for Jack’s whimpering set her senses jangling.

_Be useful. Be good, be careful, don’t make him mad._

Feeling furtive and guilty, repressing the urge to call out and announce herself. Michele moved from room to room on silent feet using her knife to deface every symbol she could find.

Jack’s thready cries were coming from up the stairs and it took everything she had not to turn that way and go to him. The sound of his distress dragged at her resolve every moment she spent destroying pictographs.

_Be useful. Be good, be careful, don’t make him mad._

Finished with everything on the ground floor, Michele pushed the front door open and caught Crowleys eye.

She didn’t wait for him, instead _finally, finally_ turning to the stairs and starting up.

There were three rooms up there under the sloping roof, all coming off the stunted hallway at the top of the stairs.

Two doors were open, one shut.

She could tell the Jack was in the closed room.

She turned towards it.

But suddenly Crowley was right there beside her, his hand clamped tight and forbidding on her arm.

He narrowed his eyes and shook his head.

Jerked his chin in the direction of the closer of the two open doors instead.

She gritted her teeth and shook her head, jabbed a finger at the door to the room where the baby was crying. 

_‘Jack!’_ She mouthed silently, tugging against his grip.

Eyebrow raised, he smirked at her and raised a finger, ticked it back and forth in front of her face; scolding like a parent, and pointed to the closest open door.

_Be useful. Be good, be careful, don’t make him mad._

The door led into a small bathroom.

It was empty.

She turned to glare at Crowley, but he was already headed for the second open door.

That room turned out to be a bedroom, at first glance it appeared to be empty as well.

Crowley was stopped at the foot of the bed.

With a flicker of shock Michele realised the bed wasn’t just rumpled and unmade like she first thought, the sheets were pulled up over a shape.

A dismissive hand wave from Crowley pulled the sheet back and sent it slithering to the floor.

Kelly!

It was Kelly.

Crowley just stood there hands in his pockets, unmoved, staring down at Jack’s mother.

Kelly stared back at him unblinking, her lips parted slightly in surprise.

Michele pushed past the demon and reached out a hand, mouth open to begin explaining to Kelly that it was okay, they were there to help. To say Kelly didn’t need to be afraid. To say how happy she was that Dagon and Crowley had been wrong, and that it was all going to be fine.

Except Kelly _wasn’t_ fine.

She didn’t react, her chest was still, her skin cold as ice.

Michele’s frantic fumbling fingers couldn’t find a pulse.

_“No.”  
_ Crowley’s hand landed over her mouth from behind, and pulled her away while muffling the word by stuffing it back into her mouth.

He frowned down at her, as though the horror and grief, clogging her throat and blurring her vision with fresh tears was a mildly puzzeling overreaction.

Kelly didn’t look dead, but she was.  
Incorrupt, it was a Catholic term.

_Be useful. Be good, be careful, don’t make him mad._

Pulling herself together, Michele shrugged out of Crowley’s grip and turned away from the bed resolutely, back towards the last room, where Jack continued to cry.

Heart in her throat, hands shaking, she turned the knob and stepped inside.

The first thing she saw was Jack, her heart lurched.

He was lying in the wooden crib Kelly had built, under the window.

Crying pitifully and flailing his tiny arms and legs in distress.

A golden dagger was buried in his little chest, piercing him right through.  
Pinning him to the white mattress; like a sadistic lepidopterist had mistaken him for a butterfly, and his crib for a display board.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 208


	7. History

** What Isn’t And Came To Be **

Chapter 6: History

A crying baby, the taste of power emanating in the air.

It was true what they said, history had a habit of repeating.

This time it was the son of Satan he was here for, and he intended events to work out better than they had with Amara. All that time and effort he’d spent on her, yet the few hours she’d spent being doted on by Squirrel had outweighed all of it.

It had infuriated him, but by then he’d understood. The partial demon cure and the fiasco with demon Dean, it had helped clarify the bias; he’d come to see that the good guys had an unfair advantage when it came to winning the hearts and minds, of impressionable infants and otherwise. 

This time he’d come prepared, if sentimentality was the coin required to buy the hearts and minds of the apocalyptically powerful youth of tomorrow, he had just the bid.

Pretty green eyes, snub nose, freckles and all the wholesome goodness, and misplaced optimism of a lifetime movie heroine. His very own Disney Poppins, prophet of the Lord on a string. She was practically perfect in every way. For manipulating Jack Kline, that was. 

The soon to be reinstated King of Hell lingered in the doorway, hands in pockets, observing proceedings.

He noted the human shadow burned onto the wall directly across from the crib; mother Winchester’s lightly charred corpse tumbled against the wall, face down beneath, like a puppet with it’s strings cut and wondered idly where the woman’s spirit had ended up this time. Up, down — or else where.

Ever since Amara had brought her back, Mary Winchester had been the preverbial bad penny, she’d caused her sons nothing but drama and angst, (not that either of her son’s would admit that, even to themselves.) But he was an expert on horrible mothers, and didn’t shy away from telling it like it was.

A small horrified gasp brought his attention back, to the not so horrible mother in the room.

Michele rushed over to the crib, heedless of the carnage tumbled against the wall behind her. Attention so completely taken up by the kabobbed infant. Predictable one track mind, shocking lack of self-preservation. His views on these tendencies in his newest acquisition were mixed, it depended on whether they thwarted or furthered his plans on any given day.

Today, he _was_ banking on her rushing in where angels (and demons) feared to tread.

Michele’s small hands hovered over the fake angel blade skewering through the baby nephilim and drew back. For a moment he feared that she would balk. Then she began to speak. A flow of soothing sounds and words.

“Oh! Poor baby, poor Jack, I know, I know, it hurts.   
Shhh sweetheart, Shhh… We’re going to help you…” Hands running over the child’s extremities, she checked for other injuries, then cupped the infants cheek and stroked it’s hair.

It was all he could do, not to perform a jig in celebration when the child didn’t blast her across the room, to join Mary.  
When it quietened under her touch.

 _“Shouldn’t remove an impaled object,”_ Ma Cherie murmured to herself, like she was remembering a lesson, _“removal can cause worse bleeding, pack around it to stabilise, call an ambulance…”_

“Crowley, we need to call an ambulance!”

He let out a long suffering sigh over the stupidity of the uninitiated. (He blamed Moose for her lack of education.) And ambled further into the room, hands still in his pockets. Ignored her pointless agitation and strolled over to Mary Winchester’s corpse, kicked it over on to it’s back.

“ **Crowley**!” Michele barked, demanding action from him with just his name, her green eyes leaving the child for one moment, to glare at him.

_Bossy wench._

Then, and only then, did she make note of the body.

She made a weird little sound, her gaze tracking back and forth between obviously dead Mary Winchester, and the skewered infant. Mouth open with shock.

She looked like a complete imbecile.

“I know it’s a trifle difficult keeping up, Darling.  
But junior there, he isn’t exactly a normal child.” He stooped to examine the surprised rictus cooked onto mother Winchester’s face, prodded curiously at her char blackened hands.  
There was atomised metal embedded in the blackened, exposed bones of her right hand. _How utterly fascinating!_

“If the pig sticker didn’t kill the child outright, one must assume, removal will do no further harm.” He told her, while fingering Mary Winchester’s singed locks.  
The hair was brittle and turned to powder between thumb and forefinger.   
Weirdly, the room didn’t reek of burned flesh or singed hair and the woman’s clothing was unaffected.   
Similar to smiting, but different.

“How can you kn—“ Michele broke off, inhaling sharply.

He looked up from the corpse again, and saw the child had wrapped one of its tiny fists around her finger.   
The child’s eyes were glowing, and a gold flare of power spidered it’s way up her arm, neck and cheek, kindling an answering golden light in her own eyes.

“Mary stabbed you, how could she?… I know, I know sweetheart, I’m going to help… I’m just worried I’ll hurt you worse, just hold on, okay?” She spoke like a somnambulist holding a conversation in a dream as she wrapped her hand around the blade and tugged. It slid free from the child’s chest with a small, wet sucking sound. 

The baby cooed. 

Michele blinked rapidly and looked down at the blade in her hand, appearing vaguely puzzled for one short moment, then she dropped it. The blade hit the floor with a dull clang as she reached for the child.

The wound was already gone. The only sign a blade had ever been spiked through the infant’s chest was a small smudge of blood and a frayed hole in the child’s blue cotton onesie.

The blade rolled across the wooden floor and fetched up against Crowley’s tesoni clad foot, with a small thud. He wiped powdered Winchester from his hands with his handkerchief, and picked it up. Stood there, making a show of examining the blade.

Meanwhile Michele had picked up the child and was cradling it close. She glared, narrow eyed at Mother Mary’s corpse.

“That’s Mary Winchester, Sam and Dean’s Mother.” She said tightly. No tears for Mother Winchester, no, kitten still held a grudge.   
“She was with Kelly all the way through her labour, held her hands, wiped her brow. Told her everything was going to be okay, that she’d look after Jack. She cleaned him up and dressed him. Why the hell would she try and kill him, after all that?”

“More to the point, where did she get this?” Crowley waved the golden blade feigning puzzlement. “It _looks_ like an archangel blade, sure, but it isn’t. No angel or demon would be fooled by it. It’s an excellent replica, don’t get me wrong. But angel blades, they resonate.”

“Someone human?” Michele suggested. “Someone that knew what Jack was, and enough about archangel blades to identify one visually. But, didn’t have the ability to identify a fake by… feel? Not Sam and Dean because they’d have tried to utilise it against Lucifer.” Her eyes widened and her nose scrunched.  
“The British Men of Letters?” Her lips thinned and her expression sharpened further. He felt a flash of warm appreciation, for not having to spell things out. People rarely doubted the answers they came up with for themselves. And if they discovered out the truth later on, you could always point out you hadn’t been the one to mislead them.

“Mary was still working for them?”  
She asked, following the false trail of bread crumbs he’d laid out.

Repressing a smirk, he tilted his head thoughtfully and shrugged. “Perhaps, I couldn’t tell you, now Hess is dead.”

  
The baby in the Prophet’s arms started to snuffle softly, pawing at her shirt. “I know your hungry, sweet boy,” she murmured looking down at the infant, “I think I saw some formula… Oww!” Her eyes widened in shock, and her hand rose to her chest.

Wetness was seeping through the black silk over her breast.   
His first assumption was blood, then, he realised what he was looking at and raised an brow, utterly intrigued.

“Let’s just assume he doesn’t want formula, shall we?” He observed mildly.

Michele didn’t respond, staring down at the child in her arms, gob smacked. Amusingly caught up in her little moment of body horror.   
She just stood there with the child bleating away, scrabbling at the fabric of her shirt. 

A thought occurred to him then, and he turned back to the corpse at his feet. Felt around under the clothing.   
Mother Winchester showed no signs of budding lactation.

Well, well, Ma Cherie ought to be flattered.

She didn’t look flattered, she looked decidedly flustered.   
When he’d walked the earth as Fergus MacLeod, wet nursing had been a respected profession, everyone with a certain level of affluence farmed out their infants to one.   
Nowadays, in western countries, nursing someone else’s child seemed to have become oddly taboo.   
  
Yes, he could tell from her face that the thought of allowing the child of Satan to suckle at her bosom, was utterly scandalous to the poor things sensibilities. How delightful!

“Come now Pet, you have to admit it’s convenient.”

She pouted at him then, her face militant. “For you maybe!   
You planned this, didn’t you?” She accused.

Impertinent wee chit. He imagined grabbing her by her hair, dragging her into the other room, and tossing her down on the bed on top of Kelly Kline’s corpse, tearing open that borrowed shirt she was wearing. Imagined the feel of tearing silk under his hands and the sound of the buttons pinging across the room helter skelter, the feel of her struggling against him as he forced the little monster down onto her tit.   
It would be easy. It would be fun.

But sadly, what it wouldn’t do was facilitate buy in.

“I really didn’t,” he answered mildly, “the lore on nephlim is patchy at best. Besides, not so long ago, many women died in child birth. Wet nursing was a respectable and honoured profession. Considered an act of charity towards the unfortunate. My own son, Gavin, wouldn’t have survived to adulthood if it hadn’t been for...” He cut himself off, turning away towards the door. “Anyway, if you are so parsimonious, you can’t bare to lower yourself to an act of age old _Christian charity_. There is that can of manufactured, substitute muck in the kitchen.   
I fully understand, the poor little motherless thing will probably survive your neglect.”

Michele looked down at the child in her arms and her face softened. “No Crowley, you’re right. Breast is best.” She sighed wearily. “Besides, baby formula round Johnny. Not a great idea.”

He tilted his head asking for explanation.

“About five months after Chris was born, some psycho threatened to poison baby formula as a protest about the conservation department dropping 1080 poison, to kill possums, New Zealand has an issue with them, they carry TB. Anyway, it was all over the news and Johnny heard about it.” She winced remembering. “Ever since he’s had it in his head that baby formula is poisonous, won’t believe anything else. With everything he’s been through in the last few days …” she grimaced and sighed again. “Watching his mother and her new friend the King of Hell ‘try to poison’ a baby might be the straw that breaks the camels back.”

With that she seated herself resolutely in the wooden rocking chair Kelly Kline had purchased, and reached up to unbutton her shirt, then blushed bright red. “Just… umm could you… not watch. _Please_?”

He was tempted to push it just to see her squirm, but decided against being bloody minded. It wasn’t like he hadn’t seen all of her assets already.

He turned and picked up Mary Winchester’s corpse draping it easily over his shoulder.

“I’ll just go take out the trash then, shall I?”

“Crowley?” Michele looked up at him then, from her place on the rocker, baby in her lap, a stoic look on her face.

He returned her gaze, corpse draped over his shoulder. “What?”

“Can you… bring… her here a sec’”

Frowning he acquiesced, mostly out of curiosity.

Michele stood up again and held the baby close to Mary Winchester’s body.

“Her name was Mary Winchester,” she said. “I’m not going to say she was always a good person, or that I liked her, but you killed her, Jack. And now she’s dead, gone… like your mother. Kelly.  
Mary had son’s too, Jack.  
Sons that cared about her. Mary’s sons were _my friends_ and we lost them in another universe, and Castiel too, because of helping you.   
We are going to do our best to look after you, to give you the life your mother wanted. We’ll be your family.   
But this can’t happen again.” She gripped the child’s hand in hers, jaw clenched and pushed the infants hand against the corpse, like someone rubbing a puppy’s nose in a mess it had just made.

_Was the woman utterly insane, or just stupid? The proof of what the Nephil could do when upset was right in front of her._

“Killing people, it isn’t the way! Do you understand me Jack Kline?!” She continued her lecture in a sharp scolding tone.   
“People are going to do things, things you don’t like and maybe they’ll scare you or even hurt you. But _you mustn’t kill them.  
_ Have I made myself clear?”

The child whimpered, it’s crystal blue eyes turned up to the little prophet’s green ones.

Then nodded once as if an understanding had passed between them, released the creatures hand and sighed wearily, looking exhausted but relieved.

It was then Crowley realised, she was neither stupid nor ignorant. She’d known the risk. 

“Thank you Crowley.” The corner of her mouth quirked in a faded unhappy smile which didn’t reach her eyes. 

_You know you are lucky that didn’t hurt you more than it hurt him, don’t you pet?_

“I figured, kind of an important teachable moment.  
Not one of my usual ones.   
But important.” She bit her lip and gazed at him as if hoping for reassurance. “Before this, don’t pulled the pussy cat’s tail, was more my speed.” She dropped her eyes back to the child with a grimace. Looking all out to sea.

“Come on little lad, lets get you fed. Maybe then, we can go get Johnny, and go home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 288


	8. Weird Science

** What Isn’t And Came To Be **

Chapter 7: Weird Science

Jack Kline looked up with his wide unfocused new born eyes, taking in the sight of a familiar face, one he had only ever seen reversed, in murky memory. Green eyes welling with concern looked down at him from behind framed lenses and messy bangs.

“Oh!Poorbaby, poorJack, Iknow, Iknow, ithurts.   
Shhhsweetheart, Shhh… We’regoingtohelpyou…”

The voice was soft and soothing, but the sounds held only the barest shadows of meaning.

Warm, gentle hands ran over his body. There was a familiarity in the touch, despite the awful pain spiking through his chest, he was comforted by it.

Reaching out a weak flailing hand, Jack wrapped one of the kind woman’s fingers in his fist, wanting desperately to communicate his bewilderment with everything he had experienced so far of the world. 

Floods of sensation, sound and half focused images flowed out of him in a surge of golden radiance.

***

His mother’s voice, telling him that she loves him, one last time; as an overwhelming constriction grips him and propels him into blinding light.

A sensation of tearing and sundering.

Then, an overwhelming feel of absence and loss.

A lessening of what he was, words and knowledge slipping away out of his grasp as his mother’s soul and spirit depart, leaving him alone.  
  


An unknown time later, something overshadows him, a huge monolithic figure that looms high above. It makes loud, sharp noises, reaching out to shake at the rapidly cooling bulk that was once his mother. But the body is empty of everything that was once Mother, achingly unresponsive to his cries, or the stranger’s attempts to rouse her.

Suddenly, he is swept up into the air, lifted from where he has been lying.

Blue eyes peer down at him from under a halo of gold wavy hair.

 _But it is all wrong.  
_ The eyes are wrong.   
They aren’t the eyes of an Angel, there is no resonance behind the flesh.   
This isn’t Castiel, the one who was supposed to be here, to be his father.

The being holding him is human, like his mother was, but something about the woman is… off. Waves of confusion, resentment and fear batter at him, emanating from her and a darkness flickers in and out of the warm radiance of her human aura. 

The stranger carries him away from Mother’s body.

A flurry of sensations follow.

The crystalline sound of running water.

A warm wet cloth rasping over his skin.

Hands, seemingly huge and all encompassing manipulate his oddly weighted and unresponsive body.

Fabric covers his chilled skin.

Then the stranger goes away and he is left for what seems like a long time.

When she returns, her aura is more stormy, shot through with anger, fear and grief and yet more of that stomach churning darkness.

Something long, gold, _beautiful_ and glimmering is in her hand.

…The way the light from the window runs along its shiny length, reflecting onto the ceiling is wondrous to his newborn eyes.

Pain! Sudden, sharp and shocking! How could something so beautiful and shiny-gold make such hurt!?

He has no control of the blast of power that lashes out, battering the strange woman away from him.

The universe whimpers. The strange woman’s spirit and soul go away, the darkness goes away.

He is totally alone.

Hurt and afraid, crying … An eternity abandoned.

So alone, so confused, so scared.

Wailing unanswered, till the pain in his throat and chest are the whole world. 

Then _she_ comes and he knows _her_.

He remembers, _“I am,”_ and images of faces that she shared. Her face, a family, a child, like him, that she loves, as Mother once loved him.

***

“Mary stabbed you, _how could she?_ … I know, I know sweetheart, I’m going to help… I’m just worried I’ll hurt you worse, just hold on, okay?” 

Something has changed inside him, with the sharing. Jack understands the sounds, they carry emotion and meaning now. 

It is as if the ship of his being has found safe harbour in the hands that comfort him, and in the green depths of the eyes looking down upon him, with warm compassion.

She wraps that warm comforting hand around the beautiful-horrible golden pain and draws it out.

She makes the agony stop.

She is everything that is good, like mother.

He watches as the beautiful shiny-gold thing that caused such pain, slips through her fingers and falls away out of sight.

…ooo0ooo...

After Crowley left with Mary’s body, Michele looked down at the child in her arms, with a shocky, sick fear welling somewhere near her stomach.

  
It was hard to comprehend that something so small and defenceless looking, could kill.

It scared her, the thought of bringing this child back to where Johnny was, it scared her.

But what could she do, Crowley wanted them to play happy families and he had all the power.

Jack had changed her body in the blink of an eye, made her start producing milk. Because he was hungry.

Crowley had already done something to her, when he brought her back, he’d made her body years younger _,_ somehow. And now this child was twisting her physiology to suit its needs on whim! Everything, even her own body seemed to be slipping out of her control.

Crowley said he hadn’t known, hadn’t planned it, but everything seemed like a setup, like he was dealing cards from a loaded deck in a magic act.

The demon wanted to use Jack as a weapon, and wanted to use _her_ as something to hold over Jack’s head, to elicit obedience, the same way he was with Johnny on her. It all felt so inescapable.

Michele was both a scientist and a mother, she knew the major hormones involved in lactation.  
Oxytocin and Prolactin.

Oxytocin, the love hormone, which affected recognition, trust, empathy and emotional bonding, as well as attraction, sexual or otherwise.   
It was part of the chemical cocktail Sirens and Mermaids used on their victims for a reason.

And then there was Prolactin, a hormone which altered neural circuits, reduced negative reactions to stress, helped with adaption … and also increased the production of dopamine. Dopamine was a hormone that played a pivotal role in motivation, reward and pleasure, it was implicated in the formation of addiction.

From a survival standpoint, it made sense.   
Nephilim were creatures that killed their real mothers on birth; they required another nurturer; to feed and care for them, to love them.

From that scientific, survival standpoint, Michele could almost appreciate the elegance of it all.

From a personal standpoint, however, it felt like entrapment and manipulation.

Crowley wanted her to be a doting, willing and malleable caregiver and Jack, by some inbuilt reflex was acting as his accomplice. What else could, or would the two of them do to her, to get what they desired? The thought horrified her.  
  


Except… she looked down at the baby in her arms… and her heart whispered, ‘ _I know you.’_

She’d known this child, from the moment he’d been just a glimmer of possibility; just a wistful idea and a string of words on his mother’s lips. 

She’d known him, before he was born; when he swum in darkness to the ebb and flow of Kelly’s blood and breath, and dreamed his watery dreams. She’d shared with and taught him about the world; of love and loss, and helped to save his life when his mother, Kelly, lost all hope.

She had been there, holding his hand, in some odd way, when Jack had broken free of the will and purpose of Lucifer and burned Dagon to ash.

She’d been there when Kelly named him, Jack, and built his crib, and recorded her tearful goodbyes.

She and Jack had always, always, shared some kind of bond, and despite everything, Michele couldn’t help but believe that God meant for her to love and care for him.

Jack had been through a lot, in such a short time. He’d lost so much, been hurt, afraid, hungry and alone.

Michele sunk into the rocking chair and unbuttoned her shirt, cradling the child close.

Chris had never managed to breastfeed, and she’d ended up having to milk herself like a cow, with a machine, for a year, because of his oral issues (and refusals, from several quarters, on the topic of baby formula.) it had been more than 7 years since she’d held Johnny in her arms and fed him like this. But, it was surprising how easily she fell back into the task.

The cold-hot electric shock pain-sensation of milk let down.

The demanding clamp and tug of the small mouth latching on.

It hurt.

They never told you that in antenatal class, but, at the start, breastfeeding was pretty much an act of endurance.

You did it for love and because you had to, because it was expected and you’d come this far; endured this much pain already, getting the child into the world. What was a little more? Worn out by the trauma of the birthing experience and shellshocked, discomfort came secondary to the necessities of nature.

She might not have given birth, but Michele felt more than a little shell shocked herself. Yesterday she had died.

…ooo0ooo…

Crowley collected the two corpses snapping himself and his cargo of dead, between North Cove, Washington and Beijing China in the blink of an eye.

The laboratory facility where he stood, was a far cry from his days poking and fumbling at monster corpses in abandoned warehouses; that smug tub of guts Leviathan, who’d pranced around wearing Dick Roman’s face, had been correct saying science had it’s uses.

This slick hightech research laboratory, was just one of several medical interests Crowley now had in China; all housed in unremarkable buildings in forgettable Jiāoqūs. Far, far away from Winchester meddling and Men of Letters snooping.

Crowley had come to adore communism, fascism, despotism and any other -ism that squashed free press and devalued human life, in the years since his first taste, back in good old Nazi Germany. All the -isms churned out a populas of fearful, obedient dupes, conditioned against questioning authority figures.

Asians tended to be polite, honorable, dutiful and useful. And it _definitely_ didn’t hurt that they tended towards shorter stature; unlike the looming, overgrown oafs he had been forced to tolerate, while working in the States.

The people of communist China also raised far fewer objections against incorporating magic and ritual into their scientific endeavours, as a culture they had yet to banished the supernatural to fairy tales; like their biased, western counterparts.

When some of China’s top scientific minds had simply vanished out of circulation, into Crowley’s employ, no one had so much as raised an eyebrow. Things like that happened, all the time, and prying was discouraged. Unless you wished to disappear also.

This current facility, was a top secret anex of the Academy of Military Medical Sciences; proportedly run by the strong arm of the people’s republic of China.

The research scientists and various hangers on, working there, believed Major General (Dr.) Chen Jingyuan, Director General of the Health Department, for the people’s republic, had approached each and every one of them personally. Hand picking them, for their loyalty, exceptional scientific prowess and dedication to their country.

Of course, Crowley was the one that had told them all these lies, while wearing Major General (Dr.) Chen Jingyuan’s meat, to seduce them away from their lesser paying, actual government employment.  
  


Crowley laid the corpses out on a pair of metal gurneys in one of the large walkin refrigerators and paused for a moment to study what was left of Kelly Kline and Mother Winchester.

He didn’t have any specific plans for the two corpses. Yet.  
But he never let such opportunities pass him by.

Crowley found his head scientist, He Jiankui, staring at a computer screen attached to the damnably expensive scanning electron microscope, he’d purchased the previous year.

He cleared his throat, making the little Asian man jump in shock and wrenched him out of what ever mad scientist pondering he was currently persuing.

The man straightened stoically as he barked a string of Mandarin orders pertaining to the where abouts and storage of the two corpses. Jiankui smiled at him then, slanty eyed and bowed his head in eager compliance. Looking for all the world like he had just won the lottery, rather than been ordered to store a brace of corpses.

He Jiankui had always been a tad eccentric, had long skated the edge of what others (even those from fascist or communist countries- obsessed with progress at all costs) considered ethical, to further his ground breaking research into fetal stemcell transplantation, cloning, DNA and human gene modification.

It had been an easy task to tumble Jiankui over those arbitrary, annoying ethical lines and into live human (and monster) experimentation. Crowley’s little farce with Major General (Dr.) Chen Jingyuan had been just the job. He fully believed the people’s republic and his revered leaders, endorsed all his explorations (for the greater good, of course) into realms where _lesser men_ feared to tread.

Crowley’s monster samples and little projects had led He Jiankui in fascinating new directions of scientific study and he was more than enthusiastic to assist Crowley.

When Crowley had desired to extract the DNA of one Samuel Winchester from various hair and blood samples, and then find a way to incorporate that DNA into the vegetative body of a Caucasian male, (who had once housed Lucifer) in order to solve the vessel degradation issue and create a permanent prison for his enemy, Jiankui had willingly complied.

Crowley fed and valued the Chinese scientist’s proclivities, as a result the little man was as sold as any deal candidate Crowley had ever convinced to pucker up, at a crossroads.  
Jiankui’s soul was undoubtably still headed to Hell, but Crowley’s foresight in not involving a demon deal in this, his little side endeavour, had proved wise again and again over the years. Jiankui and co stayed off the books. So work had continued here, throughout every ebb and flow of Hell’s leadership squabbles.

Crowley’s head scientist sent some minions off to deal with the bodies and began to update him on the progress of the various projects they were pursuing.

Crowley hid the fact he only understood one in every five words of technical jargon the man was spouting. He didn’t want a repeat of the incident where he’d complained about the cost of running that damn electron microscope, had asked, rhetorically, if the thing ran on gold. Only to be told, by the insufferable little scientist that, yes indeed, part of the visualisation process did involve coating the sample with actual gold atoms.

Jiankui continued unabated, prattling on animatedly at him in Mandarin, about his personal project (Creation of gene therapy to render an individual genetically immune to certain viruses,) and the unforeseen (by Jiankui) issue of the recipients developing haemophilia as a result. (Fancy that, considering the man had been using jinn genetic material to confer the immunity.) But Crowley barely paid mind, his thoughts mostly taken up by planning his next moves.

First he needed to organise a safe, secure location to store Lucifer’s nephilim spawn and his caretakers.

A comfortable gilded cage for his new pets. Not in America, New Zealand or some other English speaking nation, he decided. Not after Ma Cherie had been all set to run off and blab to Jodie Mills.

Not China either, he decided irritably, China and New Zealand, his pet prophet’s home country, shared too many political ties.

He wanted somewhere situated in a pleasantly misogynistic nation, preferably with a bad track record of human rights. Especially, for foreign women. One of the Arab nations, perhaps.

Then, after his amusing little toy family was comfortably settled into a gilded cage, there was the ever present issue of Hell, and his erstwise throne to be dealt with.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 399
> 
> Please leave a comment or Kudos, it’s only a click of a button and it’s for the good cause, keeping an author writing.


	9. Like A House On Fire

** What Isn’t And Came To Be **

Chapter 8: Like A House On Fire

“Daddy’s home!” With a jolt Michele startled at hearing Crowley’s announcement from downstairs. Where ever he had taken Kelly and Mary’s bodies and what ever he’d been doing for the past half hour, he had returned.

Eager as she was to get back to Johnny and go home, she wished he had given her a few more minutes.

Hastily, she stuffed the piece of paper she’d written the cottage’s wardings on inside a bag of nappies, joining the diary, tablet and charger she had found in Kelly’s room earlier.

Crowley’s footsteps traversed the stairs jauntily as she picked up a soft toy and hugged it to her chest.

Moments later the door swung open.

The demon scowled at her from the doorway. “What on earth are you wearing?”

“Uhm, Clothes?” She answered, grip tightening on the teddy bear.

“Yes, yes I can see that.” He growled, with an acerbic bite to his voice.

“I was cold, and figured… Kelly wouldn’t mind.” 

Michele licked at her lips nervously, Crowley sounded angry, and she wasn’t sure what he thought she’d done wrong. But what ever it was, it would pay to mollify him quickly. 

“You look, ridiculous.”

She looked down at herself, confused. Why did he care about how she looked?   
Okay. Yes, Kelly Kline had been pregnant, taller and built differently and the shoes were 2 sizes too big. But surely, she had looked worse traipsing around barefoot in his spare shirt.

“Like a bag lady.” He added, tone practically dripping with scorn. She _was_ wearing more layers than the temperature called for and admittedly _had_ gone a bit overboard. But each layer she’d put on had made her feel safer. 

“I just didn’t think it was all that politic to turn up, back home, to my husband, wearing nothing but your shirt.” She forced an ingratiating smile and tried to explain, without admitting how much she hated being half naked in his presence.

 _Was his pique really caused by what she was wearing, or did he know about the warding diagrams somehow?  
_Her heart hammered as she forced herself not to look in the direction of the bag of nappies. She’d thought that adding the extra line through each drawing would render them powerless and undetectable. But if she was wrong… it would explain things.

“I – I mean, I’ve been gone for two days and suddenly I turn up with a strange guy and I’ve got some random baby to look after…” Crowley tilted his head, eyes narrowed and she stumbled to a stop.   
She’d said the wrong thing again, she could tell.

“What?” She asked helplessly, squeezing the bear tighter.

“I’m trying to work out if you’re dim or just hard of hearing.” The line between his brows deepened. “I thought I’d made myself clear. You aren’t going back, to your husband or that house.   
As far as Phillip Chadwick is concerned, you are dead! And your home, such as it was; it’s now a burned out shell.”

“What? No!”

 _“What? No!”_ he mimicked her mockingly. “How did you think I was cleaning up _your mess, Pet?_ ”

“You, you burnt down my house. B-but…” She felt sick, had he really torched her entire life, why was he doing this to her?

“B-b-but.” He mimicked again with a sneer. “Count yourself lucky I didn’t eat your tailor.”

 _Was that a joke or a threat, what the actual heck?  
_ _Oh God, was everyone else okay?_ _Had they managed to save anything?  
_ _… poor Phil, he must be beside himself… This was all her fault!_

“Do stop being so overly dramatic, Darling.   
Surely you didn’t want your family to go through the trauma of having to keep _living_ in that house, where you and the boy were brutally murdered. I did them a favour.”

She opened her mouth, but Crowley just steamrollered on.

“Besides, between the various life insurance policies and the house insurance, your erstwhile husband is now an extremely wealthy man. You _ought_ to be happy for them.”

“Happy? But, but, I’m not dead! Neither is Johnny!”

“Yes well, I imagine if that little fact came to light, the authorities might take a dim view, to say the least. What with the two dead bodies and the defrauding of insurance companies for excessive amounts of money.   
Those are _criminal_ activities, aren’t they, Pet?”

“But… we didn’t.   
No one would think…   
Besides, you can’t just toss a couple of corpses stolen from some morgue into a burning building and have the coroner decide that they’re me and Johnny. That’s not how it works! There’s dental records, DNA...”

Crowley smiled at her then, almost pityingly.

“What… did… you… do?”

“Pop quiz, Love. Carver Edlund’s book, ‘Caged heart,’ what kind of monster did Hell’s most dashing demon have a whole nursery full of?”

She blinked at him, before the penny dropped. “Shifter’s.” She said slowly. “But… how…”

“A few photos, a bit of blood, a lock of hair, a baby tooth…”

“…you told the alpha you were going to kill them.”

“I lied, I do that, Demon, remember. Besides I doubt the alpha shifter cared much about their fate, once I chopped off his head.   
I have quite the menagerie of beasties nowadays.” Crowley looked smug, like she ought to be impressed.

“So, Jack and I. We are just _beasties_ , to add to your menagerie?”

“Hardly.” He stepped closer, his brow smoothing as all the previous anger just melted away, like it had never been, and tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear. There was an almost reverent gentleness to the gesture.

“You’re the only one I have left now,” he murmured holding her gaze. “The only one who has ever believed I could change, or be anything other than a monster. Even knowing, all the messy things I’ve done.” He closed his eyes wearily and sighed, “I need you, the child needs you, Ma Cherie.”

He looked so very earnest standing there, before her with his hands shoved deep in his pockets, and she remembered the way he had wrapped his arms around her and clung to her, while he cried; after he returned from the apocalypse world, alone.

How did he do it? she wondered dimly. He had just told her that he _killed_ two shapeshifters and _burned down her house_. Subtly threatened her with prison for murder and fraud; and here she was, with an urge to hug him, and try to comfort him.

“Please Crowley.” She laid a hand on his coat sleeve, Jack’s bear dangling, and looked up at him with welling eyes.   
“I _do_ believe you can change, _but can’t you see_ , part of changing would be to let me go _home_. To break the contract on Johnny’s _soul and_ let us _go home_.   
Please?!   
Phil needs me too.”

Crowley’s face hardened stormily. “So you’re a liar then? When you said you didn’t want to leave, you were just telling me what I wanted to hear?!”

“Why does helping you mean I have to leave them?   
They’re my family, Crowley.   
How can you expect me to just abandon them and not look back. And… I didn’t exactly mean it like that, you’re twisting things!”

“How _exactly_ did you mean it, then?”

“What I said, I meant that you’ve won, that I can’t fight you, not when you’re holding Johnny’s _soul_ hostage, _he’s my son!  
_Check mate. I get it, okay! You’re in charge.” Again she reached out. “But you don’t have to coerce or force me. I want to help you be more than a monster. I want to help Jack and make sure he doesn’t turn out like Lucifer, but... Why can’t I do both… my family _needs_ me, and I need _them_...”

“ENOUGH!” He bellowed, eyes flashing a furious red.

She stumbled back, away from him, dropping the bear.

In the cot, Jack startled awake at the shout and began to cry. Nervously, she swept him up into her arms. Started to rock and make small hushing sounds, desperate to quiet him, wary that the crying would make Crowley angrier.

“You were perfectly willing to abandon your family when you trapped me in that devils trap, so the bloody Man of Letters could kill you!” Crowley pointed out cooly, his tone more modulated, as he eyed Jack in her arms. “How exactly is this different? Damn it woman! I let you keep your favourite. The rest of them are safe. Set for life! And _still_ none of it is good enough for you, you’re _still_ fighting me.”

“No, I’m not fighting. I don’t _want_ to fight you. _I’m_ _begging you_. Please Crowley.” She whispered brokenly, feeling tears prick her eyes and well to trickle helplessly down her cheeks. “ _Please, I just want to go home_!”

Letting out another long breath, the demon king turned his back on her and bent to pick up the bags she’d packed for Jack, treading on the teddy bear as he did so.

Crowley didn’t say a word, but he didn’t have to, every line of his stance told her, his answer was, ‘no.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 499
> 
> Merry Christmas guys ♥️🎄


	10. 9: Bloody Hell!

** What Isn’t And Came To Be **

Chapter 9: Bloody Hell!

The ingratitude! Everything he’d done for her. And still! the infuriating woman harped on about going back to her boring little life, and her waste of space husband; it was beyond aggravating!

Her attitude was utterly inconceivable, he was a King! Handsome, powerful, wealthy, someone who could give her and that brat of hers, more than her discount electrician husband ever could.

She ought to be down on her knees, kissing his testonis in gratitude of all the time, effort and resources he’d invested in her!

So what if he’d burned down her house, the husband would get a better one thanks to him. Everyone was better off with this arrangement.

The lot of them owed him!

He’d saved her, from death via blood loss from the visions, then from the Men of Letters hit, and finally from Lucifer! Surely she remembered all the abuse, rape and torture she would have suffered at Lucifer’s hands; the futures slotted to engulf the earth in one annihilation event after another. Her bleeding family was safe, something they wouldn’t have been had he not done what he did and locked Lucifer away.

Without HIM no one and nothing would have been safe from the insane archangel, or his brainwashed spawn…

He might be a demon, but thinking of the prophetic visions of those futures, Michele had passed on to him, as she lay dying. Remembering those thwarted futures, and everything Lucifer had been able to do by adding the child’s considerable powers to his own. It still filled him with a feeling of sick, panicky horror.

And it wasn’t _just_ because he’d suffered at Lucifers hands too, or because he’d died in _every single damn future,_ leaving the prophet alone with that monster and weeping over his death…

It was because, it had been the end, of EVERYTHING…

Gritting his teeth Crowley shuddered and turned his back to compose himself.

Collected the bag of baby gear.

Reminded himself, once again, that he had won.

The world, such as it was, would keep spinning on it’s axis for the foreseeable future.  
He’d nullified every bloody, Lucifer spawned ending, and every moment of shared abuse at the archangels hands.

Crowley comforted himself with the knowledge; that soon enough, he’d hold all the cards and nothing and no one would stand in his way or threaten him and his. 

Bag in hand and somewhat composed, he turned to face the prophet and son of Satan once more. Took in the odd way the child’s neck was craned towards the window. The prophet had a removed-from-reality look on her face, an expression he was beginning to associate with some form of basic communication between the two.

“Someones here,” she murmured, eyes tracking in the same direction as whatever had drawn the nephilim’s attention.

Crossing the room, he peered down through the shattered nursery window into the yard below, and saw six figures.

They stood stiffly, looking like someone had inserted lengths of dowel up their collective asses, and not in a sexy way.

Angels!

“Ballocks!” He swore, eyes jumping to the barely legible scribbles he’d gouged in the earth earlier.  
The wind had come up, and those lines were starting to crumble. They wouldn’t hold off the god squad for long.

 _Where were the winged monkeys when they were facing off against Lucifer?  
_ _Nowhere to be seen!  
_ _But now the hard work was done. Bam! A whole flight of the sanctimonious little prigs turned up on the doorstep, to steal his prophet and play at ordnance disposal._

No! Just no!

Hastily he pulled the gold fountain pen he used for contracts out of his pocket and began inking anti-Angel wardings onto the nursery wall; mind churning furiously for purchase on the latest crisis. The sound of the 18 carat gold nib scratching and burring over the dry-wall informed him he was irreparably damaging his limited edition, Gold Cross 21st Century.

It was, he admitted, too little, too late.

With only two Angel-blade rounds in his Luger and the Angel blade up his sleeve, attempting to fight six angels would be tantamount to suicide.

Trying to snap out wouldn’t work either, carrying the mass of two extra bodies there was no way he’d get away clean.   
He could cut and run alone, leave the dead weight behind and save his skin. But the thought of losing what he’d _earned_ via all his scheming in the apocalypse world, and after, enraged him.

If his meatsuit were still alive it wouldn’t be as much of an issue. But, an Angel banishing sigil required blood from a living soul endowed human, and his meatsuit had been dead for years.

“Crowley, who are they?   
Jack, he seems… drawn to them.”

Crowley glanced over his shoulder at the prophet and grimaced. “Then precious wee Jack is almost as naive as you are.   
They’re angels, Pet.   
Best guess, they’re here to kill him, and if Castiel’s reaction was any indicator, they’ll probably want to do the same to you.”

The prophet’s face paled and her arms tighten protectively around the child. It occurred to him then, that he did have a human chock full of blood and soul, standing right there in front of him.

The only real issue, became that he had no idea what effect an Angel banishing would have on Lucifer’s spawn.

Hurriedly he inked up a series of shielding glifs onto the nurseries four walls.

“Remembering all that, and the fact, that if we do die here, your son gets the choice of starving, or becoming hellhound skat. I’m going to need your help, Darling.”

“What?” She asked, lifting her chin and pushing her sulk, over burned-out domiciles and abandoned families, aside.

“I need your blood.”

“Seriously?” And just like that it was back.  
“You say they probably want to kill us, and you want to get _high_?!”

“No! And this is why your husband’s glad to be rid of you!” he hissed furious, eliciting a flinch. “…Always seeing the worst. Holding a man’s indulgences against him. Never letting bygones be bygones.   
_We,_ need your blood, for an Angel banishing sigil, you half educated shrew!   
I’d use my own, but I’m lacking a _soul,_ and unlike the god squad out there, my meatsuit’s dead.”

Drawing a blank roll of parchment from his pocket, he held it out to her. “Here. Use this.”

She looked at him all wide eyed, like a deer caught in the headlights. “I, I don’t…”

“Let me guess, you’ve got a devils trap memorised, but not an Angel banishing sigil. Colour me surprised at your utter bias!” He waved his ruined pen impatiently at the child. “Put that down and come here.”

“Look, it’s not like this isn’t costing _me_.” He said, trying to sound reasonable, despite the time crunch, “I just wrecked my pen! _A Gold Cross 21 st Century.”_

“It’s _a pen_.” She muttered unimpressed, rolling her eyes at him.

“ _Limited_ _Edition_ … Only 170 ever produced.”

She continued looking at him without a skerrick of appreciation.

“It probably cost more than that Japanese tin-can you were driving!  
Look woman, get your over-padded arse here, now, before I lose my non existent patience!”

Finally the little miser got moving. With a few soothing words to the Nephilim she laid it back down in the crib, glancing out the window at the angels nervously as she did.

“I’ve got no bloody idea what an Angel banishing will do to a nephilim, so _he_ stays here, inside the wardings, such as they are. And _we_ , go out there.   
Hand!” He demanded, grabbing her roughly to make one sharp slice across her palm with his Angel blade.

The woman yelped and tried to pull away, but he held her fast.  
In the moments before blood welled along the wound he was certain he saw a muted glimmer of luminescence flicker along the cut, but then the blood was there, scarlet and distracting.

It was all he could do to focus on smearing the sigil onto a palm sized fragment of parchment. “Do you _at least understand_ how to activate it?”

“I slap my bleeding hand on it?”

“Thank, —whoever, for small mercies, she’s not entirely useless.” He muttered to himself waving the parchment in the air until the blood dried.

Then, folding it blood side in, pressed it into her uninjured palm and turned toward the stairs, licking his fingers clean absentmindedly as he did.

“Come on then. Stay behind me, and don’t draw attention to yourself. When I say, ‘now,’ let ‘er rip.” He bared his teeth in eager anticipation. “They’ll never know what hit them.”

…ooo0ooo…

Michele followed Crowley reluctantly down the stairs, too big footwear thumping clumsily on the wooden steps.   
Wound stinging rawly, she balled her hand in a fist, to stop it dripping; and clutched the Angel banishing sigil for dear life. The thought of willingly walking towards a bunch of things that wanted to kill her filled her with panic.

When Crowley stopped and turned suddenly half way down the stairs, she wasn’t expecting it and stumbled, only stopping herself from tumbling with her wounded hand splayed against his chest.

“Wha—“ she gasped but didn’t get any further.

The demon looked down and gripped her cut hand, vicelike.

Then his mouth, tongue and teeth were on it. Sucking and nipping at her sluggishly leaking wound.

Michele yelped and flailed, trying to escape or push him off; but Crowley had demonic strength on his side and all she managed was to wrench her arm half out of its socket.

Finally, some time after she’d realised resistance was futile and steeled herself to stand and endure, Crowley lifted his face from her abused palm and looked up at her with lazy, heavy lidded eyes. Crazily, her brain noted that his irises were green, rather than brown, as she’d always thought.

“What?” He asked mildly, smiling at her with bloody teeth. 

“What??” She repeated, incredulous, glaring at him. “What the Hell, Crowley!   
One minute ago, you said you weren’t out to get high!”

“What I _said,_ was that we needed your blood for the sigil.   
Can’t have that cut clotting, now can we.” He shrugged one shoulder, unrepentant and smirked at her slyly. Then lifted her hand back to his mouth, and held her eyes suggestively as he started to suck the drying blood off each of her fingers in turn, like it was chocolate sauce.

Shuddering with helpless disgust, Michele squeezed her eyes shut and turned her face away. That didn’t however, block out the sensation or the little sounds he made. The whole production made her sick to her stomach, it was all she could do not to vomit or scream. But she’d be damned if she’d give him any more reaction.

When he was finally finished, Crowley let her pull free.

Half panicked, she pushed past, and took the stairs down two at a time in an effort to put as much space between them as she could.

“We are going for the element of surprise here you know,” he called after her, “you go out there, looking like Carrie at the prom and even that bunch of creativity stunted automatons might twig.”

“I am perfectly capable of washing my hands, like a normal, functional, human being.” She hissed low, words run together by her anger, but unfortunately he still heard them.

“Last-time hand washing was a topic. You locked me in a devils trap! And where did that end?”

_‘With you stealing my son’s soul and calling it a favour.’_ She thought miserably.

Crowley stood there scowling at her from the bottom step, with his arms crossed.

Something about his pose reminded her of the beginning of the first Incredibles movie _._

_‘Mr Sansweet didn’t ask to be saved, Mr Sansweet didn’t want to be saved, and the injury caused by Mr Incredible’s so called actions, causes him daily pain.’_

_‘Hey, I saved your life!’_

_‘You didn’t save my life, you ruined my death, that’s what you did.’_

Suddenly she was bitterly tired. All the fight sapped away.

“I don’t want to fight.” she sighed wearily, “can we just deal with the angels so we can get back to Jack and Johnny.  
Please?”

Crowley smirked at her again.

“Oh I know you don’t wan’t to fight, darling. If you really hated my attentions, you could have used that little arts-and-crafts blade of yours to try and stop me. But you didn’t. Did you, Pet?”

Michele felt her mouth drop open. The little blade suddenly feeling like it weighed a ton, where it sat in her pocket.

He was right, she could have, she hadn’t even thought of it.

Even if she had, though… she couldn’t… She couldn’t _stab_ Crowley.

Crowley must have seen it on her face, his lips quirked up in a half smile. Nodding abruptly, he led her out the front door towards the group of angels without another word.

….

“Demon!” The lead Angel of the group cried, blade in hand.

“Moron,” Crowley replied mildly. “Oh sorry. Thought we were playing eye-spy. Don’t suppose you’ve seen a nephilim have you? I’m guessing we’re both here to off the little bugger. Fancy a team up? Enemy of my enemy and all that.” Crowley continued to amble closer to the angels, hands buried in his pockets, looking utterly unconcerned. Michele didn’t feel nearly as brave following behind, mostly hidden.

“Do you really think we are going to fall for that?” One of the other angels, this one wearing a tall brunette woman, scoffed scornfully. “That building is warded.”

“Yes well, heard on the grapevine Lucifer was looking for the thing.  
The warding seemed… expedient while I searched. Unfortunately, the only thing in there was a couple of dead humans.”

“A likely story.” The leader gestured to the angels behind him and the group spread out, blades drawn.

“Demon’s lie.” He declared stonily.

One of the other angels, a tall Black man in a pale grey suit, cocked his head and stared straight at her.

“What is _that_?” he demanded.

“That? How rude.” Crowley chided.   
“My _associate_ has a certain skillset, and a nephilim’s birth _is_ _practically biblical.”_

Michele sucked a breath, the way the Angel looked at her was so full of revulsion.

“I know Angels of the Lord aren’t known for their social graces, but I just assumed you’d recognise the victim of one of your little war crimes. Experimenting on innocent baby prophets, making them all nasty and _soiled_. Naughty, naughty.” Crowley tsked, his voice dripping with amusement. “What _ever_ would Daddy say.”

“Crowley!” Michele yelped grabbing at the back of his coat.   
_What the flaming heck was he doing?_

Crowley reached a hand behind him to stroke one finger down the back of her hand in warning. “Adults are talking, Love. Zip your lip like a good girl.” He ordered low.

All the angels were staring at her and each other now. Shuffling their feet and murmuring. Some were hissing about demons being liars, others were saying her name, and muttering about rumours and someone called Sibiel. A few were muttering something about Castiel and the Winchesters.

The lead Angel was rapidly losing control of his group.

“Exactly.” Crowley huffed. “Castiel and the Winchester’s find them and you’ll find the abomination.”

Crowley took two more steps forward as the angels started to argue amongst themselves, and Michele realised they had just passed over a warding sigil carved into the crumbling dirt.

“Now!” Crowley gritted.

Without hesitation Michele opened the parchment and clapped her two hands together, slapping her still bleeding palm over the sigil.

There was a sudden, blindingly white light and a sound of multiple voices screaming.

Crowley turned and wrapped his arms around her, crushing her face against his chest, his own face buried in her hair.

Then, it was over and the two of them were standing there in front of the little cottage alone.

“Just like clockwork.” He mused and patted her on the head condescendingly, before letting go and turning back the way they’d come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 559
> 
> If you’re reading and enjoying this story please don’t just click away after reading. Subscribe, Click the Kudos and leave a comment. Pretty please and thank you.


	11. When White is Blue

** What Isn’t And Came To Be **

Chapter 10: When White is Blue

Johnny Chadwick woke with the sun.

He lay still in the bed, which felt too big and hard, with the thick white starchy sheets and blankets that smelled funny; and the sinky pillow with the tag that read “100% Goose Down.” 

‘Down where?’ He’d asked Mum, when he read the tag and she had explained, that what it _really_ meant was that there were goose feathers inside the pillow.

It was a stupid pillow; and he wondered lots, since they came here to the big white apartment-house high up in the glass tower, if there were a whole bunch of butt naked geese wandering around somewhere. And if those naked geese were angry because some idiot had stolen all their feathers to make pillows. It was dumb, cos they weren’t even nice pillows, like his one back home, they were stupid, sinky, tickely sounding pillows.

Johnny wiggled his toes and turned over, trying _hard_ to make himself go back to sleep, but it was no good, he couldn’t, the pillow was making tickely sounds and he needed to pee.

He looked over at the other bed, the one closest to the door, next to Jack’s cot where Mum slept.

He hoped Mum would be awake, so she could go to the bathroom with him.

But Mum was still asleep.

He considered waking her up, and asking her to come with him, but his Mother didn’t seem to have slept much in the last few days. Not since the day he ran away from school and ran home to find the man in black in their house and Mum laying on the floor covered in blood. 

He didn’t know what to think about the man in black.

Mum called him Crowley, but he told the people who bought the baby stuff for Jack, to call him Thomas Katz.

Johnny thought the man in black was probably a doctor, one of the ones trying to stop Mum’s nosebleeds, and _that_ probably explained why he took off Mum’s bloody clothes, and why he had a big needle in her neck full of glowy stuff. But, Johnny didn’t like that the man seemed to have two different names, people who used different names were liars.

Johnny didn’t like liars, Mum didn’t like liars, and Jesus didn’t like liars; neither did God, that’s what the Bible said.

Mostly Johnny thought of the man, as ‘the man in black’, that way he wouldn’t be wrong, thinking of him using the wrong name. Because he was, a man in black.

Mostly he tried _not_ to think about the man at all.

The man in black was a stranger, and Johnny didn’t like strangers, he never knew what they would do, or the rules they worked by.

Strangers were chaos and Johnny liked order, and only the few people he knew the rules for.

  
Johnny sat up, and looked across the room at his mother again.

Mum was still asleep, in her white bed with it’s matching starchy sheets, blankets and pillow stuffed full of stupid goose butt feathers. Goose butt feathers, that ought to be covering a gooses butt, and keeping _it_ warm, not filling up some stupid, sinky pillow that rustled whenever you moved or breathed too loud on it.

He was busting!  
If he didn’t go to the loo soon, he’d pee the bed.

He was too old to pee the bed, so he got up, and padded across the thick white carpet, toes sinking into it like it was grass; and slowly pulled open the bedroom door, trying not to let it make noise.

After opening the door he looked back at his mother for another long moment trying to gather courage to go out without her.

Finally, because he was busting big time, and he _wasn’t_ a baby, he snuck out of the room.

The two doors opposite their room were closed. The man in black- Crowley-Mr Katz, had pointed to one and said it was the master bedroom and to the other and called it his office when they first arrived.

Mum stayed away from both, so he did too.

He thought that Mum was mad at the man in black, or that the man in black was mad at her.  
Cos the man in black had yelled at her, after she woke up, but he got things like that wrong sometimes.

People yelled when they weren’t mad, like when they did Maori hakas at school. And Mum said Dad yelled at him sometimes when _he_ was scared, and it _just sounded_ like he was angry, but he was _really_ just scared.

Maybe, the man in black had been scared by all the blood.

Johnny had been scared by the blood, and the bang and the bright light… and when the man in black fell over too… and when Mum’s eyes went red…. and when her voice sounded all funny, like a man’s. And then when she had squeezed his arm, hard, and it hurt really bad… _but Mum wouldn’t hurt him on purpose_ … even if she never said sorry for it after.

Johnny tried, hard, to stop thinking about all of that. Because if he thought too much about **that** he’d started crying, and rocking in his hedgehog ball again, and he’d wake Mum up and make _her_ sad, and he hated it when he made Mum sad.

He’d just think about how bad he needed to pee instead….

How bad he needed to pee, and how, if he peed on the white carpet it would look like yellow snow, and how Dad always joked that you shouldn’t eat yellow snow, because it was pee flavoured.

 _That_ was why he always chose the blue frozen drink at Mc Donald’s because blue food colouring was always fake colour, so it couldn’t ever be pee … but no, he’d read that news story, last week about the group of scientists from Auckland trying to make a natural food colouring from some native blue mushroom... 

Yuck!

Who’d want to drink mushroom flavoured stuff, mushrooms were fungi, and fungi was rot… and rot was bad and could make you sick …and was just really gross.

…Except for penicillin, which Alexander Fleming invented to kill bacteria… No, discovered, God invented penicillin, Mr Fleming just discovered it! Because he was a scientist, like Mum, and that’s what they did, they learned stuff that helped make the world better.

Finally creeping silently, and thinking about ways to make sure he wasn’t drinking mushroom-blueberry slushy; Johnny made it into the room with the giant flatscreen T.V. It took up a whole side wall, and there was a sofa and two big white leather arm chairs opposite it. The arm chairs had handles that made foot rests pop up when you pulled them. The chairs were cool, but the sofa was better, because it fitted him and Mum and Jack all at once…

With a nervous look over his shoulder towards the two closed doors, Johnny crept through the T.V room and into the bathroom.

The bathroom was also white, on white, on white, like nearly everything else in the skyscraper house.

Mum said white was an impractical colour, but he kind of liked it, everything was the same, so it was less distracting. And white was clean, you could tell if it got dirty.

And besides, white wasn’t a colour, it was a shade. If you thought of it like that, the skyscraper house could be any colour!

Johnny liked to imagine everything was actually blue, with the saturation turned right down, and the brightness turned all the way up.

He liked blue. (Well, except if it came from a mushroom! Mushrooms were yucky and gross, like potatoes. So he wouldn’t like _mushroom_ blue on principle even if it didn’t taste myshroomy.)

Johnny edged the door of the bathroom closed behind him and lifted the toilet seat like Dad taught him to, and finally, finally peed; very yellow pee, into the very white toilet.

Then he shut the lid, and sat on it to flush it, (because his body was denser than air so the sound waves would find it harder to travel through him) so the sound wouldn’t wake up Mum or make the man in black come out of his room.

He didn’t want to wake up Mum, there were dark shadows under her eyes, and she’d been crying last night after she thought he was asleep.

…Probably because she missed Dad, Chris and the sisters.

Johnny knew he should probably miss them too. But he didn’t, not really.

They were loud, and they said dumb stuff, things that weren’t actually what they meant.

Okay, Chris didn’t say dumb stuff…

Chris couldn’t really talk, but he was always sticking his fingers in his mouth and wiping spit and food on things, spreading germs, and he fell over lots. Chris was his little brother, and Johnny had prayed for him, but Chris was kind of a pain, Mum said that’s what little siblings were for, and the sisters said he was a pain too, so now it was his turn to learn to just suck it up. (Which meant deal with it, not actually sucking up anything.)

Speaking of sucking things and white things... like milk. He was a bit confused about Baby Jack, the man in black had called Jack his milk brother. He wasn’t sure he wanted _another_ little brother, and he _definitely_ hadn’t prayed for one.

Mum said you could find stuff about people you loved annoying, and that was okay. You could love them and not _always_ like them, and that needing space from people was okay.

Was that why they were here? Because Mum needed space? Everyone said he and Mum were alike, went on about how they had the same eyes and how it was easy to tell she was his Mother.   
Mum did find people overwhelming sometimes, though she hid it, so as not to hurt people’s feelings. _Maybe_ Mum secretly found Dad, the sisters and Chris overwhelming and annoying too, maybe she needed some space from them too.  
He was just glad Mum hadn’t needed space from _him_.

It had _only_ been a couple of days, so maybe not missing the rest of his family yet was okay? Johnny told himself if he and Mum stayed away for a whole month and he didn’t miss his family, _then_ he should probably start to feel guilty for not missing them. But not yet.

Getting up off the toilet seat lid, Johnny looked at the bathroom door nervously, maybe he did miss the sisters and Dad a little bit, after all. They were brave, and if they were here now, he could of hidden behind them if the man in black came.

“ _Johnny_!” He was just drying his hands on the white towel after washing them properly, using soap and hot water, and scrubbing every finger, for at least 30 seconds, like the poster in the bathroom at the hospital said you should; when he heard his Mum’s call.  
She sounded scared.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 674
> 
> A bit of a different chapter this one.  
> The mind of an 8 year old with high functioning autism, it’s a bit like a school of tiny little silvery fish darting this way and that in a clear pool.  
> It was quite a bit of fun to write.


End file.
